At least 23 people were killed and another 41 injured after two trains collided head on at a station in Indonesia's West Java province, police and hospital staff said Sunday.
"Twenty three people were killed and 17 others are injured here, 11 of them seriously," said a member of staff at Gunung Jati general hospital in Cirebon, the coastal city where the collision took place in the early hours of the morning.
Three hospitals in Cirebon, on the northern coast near the border between West and Central Java, including Gunung Jati, said they were treating 41 people between them.
Besides the 41, another 16 people had already been allowed to return home after treatment at one of the hospitals while four others had died of their injuries at the Gunung Jati.
Police in the city said the two trains -- the Cirebon Express and the Empu Jaya coming from Jakarta and bound for Yogyakarta, Central Java -- collided at the city's main station shortly before 4:00 am (2100 GMT Saturday).
"It looks as it is the results of negligence on the part of the Empu Jaya conductor. He may have been sleepy and failed to heed the railway sign when approaching the station," Adjunct Commissioner Dadang Sudiana, head of the Cirebon police operations, told the private ElShinta radio station.
Transport Minister Agum Gumelar, who also came to Cirebon to inspect the accident and visit the victims, also told the radio that "up until now, based on reports and from checks on the field, it looks like this is the results of human error.” -- JAKARTA (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
