At least 31 people were killed in Iran early on Friday when an intercity express was hit by another train while stopped at a station, the provincial governor said.
“The bodies of 31 dead have been identified and more than 70 people hospitalised,” Mohammad Reza Khabbaz, governor of Semnan province where the collision happened, told state television.
Reports gave no details on the number of passengers in the trains. But Fars said 100 passengers had been rescued.
State television showed footage of four derailed carriages, with two of them on fire. A spokesman for Iran’s Red Crescent, Mostafa Mortazavi, told Fars that firefighters were trying to control the blaze.
“The accident happened when a passenger train in motion crashed to another one that had stopped at the station,” it said.
The cause of the collision was under investigation, it said, adding that rescue teams have been dispatched to the site of accident.
“We can have a better idea about number of casualties after the fire is put out,” Ahmadi said, Mehr reported.
The crash occurred at the Haft-Khan station in the city of Shahroud, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Tehran.
