Forty dead in Indonesian train crash

Police believe more victims are trapped under the wreckage

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The death toll from one of the worst Indonesia train accidents of recent years has risen to 40, police and hospital officials said on Monday.

"From our data, 40 people died. Thirty seven people were seriously injured," Budiman, a local police spokesman, told Reuters.

The crash occurred early Sunday when a passenger train and a locomotive collided in Cirebon's main railway station.

Local media reports have quoted officials as saying human error was the likely cause of the accident. No further details were immediately available.

The accident happened at about 4 a.m. in the port city of Cirebon, about 125 miles east of Jakarta on Indonesia's main island of Java.

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Police in Cirebon told the Associated Press Sunday that more victims were believed to be trapped in the wreckage. However, a lack of heavy lifting equipment was hampering efforts to find survivors.

"We are searching for people we believe are still under the wreckage. There could be more bodies as well," Zainal Abidin, a spokesman for the state-run railway company PT Kereta Api, told AP.

Hundreds of people helped in the search, using hacksaws to cut away metal sheeting trapping survivors and ropes to pull bodies from the wreckage, witnesses said.

Tourist destination

Local television news showed pictures of bodies slumped in seats. Some bloodied survivors were sitting next to the tracks screaming. One locomotive was lying on its side atop a passenger car.

Desperate relatives search for loved ones in the wreckage

The railway spokesman told AP the passenger train was traveling from Jakarta to the popular foreign tourist destination of Yogyakarta. There were no reports of tourist casualties.

The state Antara news agency quoted Minister of Transportation Agum Gumelar as saying "human error" was to blame for the accident, which he described as a "national tragedy."

Other officials said the driver of the passenger train fell asleep before the accident. He was killed in the crash.

Indonesia has had a string of fatal train crashes recently. Officials blamed signal failures for most of the accidents.

Last month, a passenger train plowed into a crowded bus, killing at least 13 people on Java. That accident happened because the bus failed to stop at a railway crossing.

In 1987, 160 people were killed in a head-on collision between two passenger trains on the outskirts of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta.

With the nation in its worst economic crisis in a generation, budgets to maintain railway lines and other equipment have been severely slashed. Trains are also often overcrowded, with people riding on top of roofs and hanging out of doors.

Thousands of commuters around Java were left stranded because of the accident. The wreckage of the trains blocked one of the two main lines that crisscross the densely populated island.