(From top) Rescuers look for survivors after the train collision in Zibo, China’s Shandong province; a train carriage perches precariously on the edge of a ditch; rescuers rush an injured passenger to hospital from the accident site; and the undercarriage of the train from Beijing, that jumped the rails, lies on the track. (AP)

Zibo (China), April 28 (AP): A high-speed passenger train jumped its tracks and slammed into another train in eastern China today, killing at least 70 people and injuring more than 400 in China’s worst train accident in a decade.

Some passengers were sleeping and others were standing in the aisle waiting to get off in Zibo when their train toppled into a ditch “like a roller coaster” and slammed into the other train.

China reacted swiftly, sending top officials and soldiers to the scene, and sacking two railway officials.

Authorities were quoted as saying that human error was to blame. The official Xinhua News Agency also said one of the trains was travelling over its speed limit.

News photos showed rescuers pulling passengers from a carriage sitting on its side. Survivors bundled in white bed sheets from the sleeper cars stood or sat near the wreckage. The death toll could rise, with 70 people hospitalized in critical condition, according to Xinhua.

Security was tight near the scene of the accident, in a rural part of Shandong province, with roads to the crash site sealed by police and nearby roads lined by paramilitary and police vehicles.

A total of 420 people had been hurt, Xinhua said. No foreigners were among the dead. Injured survivors included four French nationals, a Chinese national sailing team coach and a 3-year-old boy.

Some 1,000 soldiers and armed police were sent to the crash site to seal it off and help with the rescue work, Xinhua said. Heavy cranes were used to move the wrecked rail cars, and workers aimed to reopen the line by early tomorrow, a little more than 24 hours after the accident.

Trains are the most popular way to travel in China, and the country’s overloaded rail network carried 1.36 billion passengers last year. While accidents are rare, the government is trying to extend and upgrade the state-run rail network and introduce more high-speed trains. The crash just before the May Day weekend holiday happened when a train travelling from Beijing to Qingdao — site of the sailing competition during the Olympics in August — derailed and hit a second passenger train just before dawn.

Nine of the first train’s carriages were knocked into a dirt ditch, railway ministry spokesman Wang Yongping said in a statement.

The second train, on its way from Yantai in Shandong to Xuzhou in eastern Jiangsu province, was knocked off its tracks although it stayed upright.

News photos showed several of its carriages sitting across the train tracks just outside the city of Zibo.

“Most passengers were still asleep, but some were standing in the aisle waiting to get off at the Zibo railway station,” one passenger surnamed Zhang told Xinhua.

“I suddenly felt the train, like a roller coaster, topple ... to one side and all the way to the other side. When it finally went off the tracks, many people fell on me,” Zhang said.

Zhang, who was on the train from Beijing, was injured when the train toppled into farmland beside the track. She said local villagers used farm tools to smash train windows to pull out trapped passengers.

“I saw a girl who was trying to help her boyfriend out of the train, but he was dead,” Zhang said.

Shandong is one of China’s richest provinces with a population of around 93 million, a large manufacturing industry, and thriving port at Qingdao.

A coach of China’s sailing team, Hu Weidong, was seriously injured in the accident, Dr Zhang Jun, head of the orthopaedics department at the Zibo Traditional Chinese Medicine hospital, was quoted as saying.

Zhang said a 3-year-old boy, Liu Jinhang, was probably the youngest injured, but he was in stable condition after being treated for a broken arm.

A 38-year-old woman told Xinhua that she and her 13-year-old daughter escaped unhurt by scrambling through a huge crack in the floor of their carriage.

“We were still sleeping when the accident occurred,” Xinhua quoted the woman, surnamed Yu, as saying. “I suddenly woke up when I felt the train stopped with a jolt. In a minute or two it started off again, but soon toppled.”

Xinhua said investigators had ruled out terrorism as a cause of the crash. Its English report said it was human error, while its Chinese-language report attributed the crash to negligence.

It also said the Beijing train was travelling at 132 km an hour at the time of the crash, over the speed limit of 80 km an hour, citing investigators.

Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao issued directives urging an all-out rescue effort, Xinhua said, and Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang and minister of railways Liu Zhijun were immediately sent to oversee the rescue operation.

Xinhua said both the director of the railway bureau in Jinan, the provincial capital and nearest big city, and the bureau’s Communist Party secretary, were sacked after the crash, and they face an investigation by the ministry of railways.

It was the second major railway accident in Shandong this year.

In January, 18 people died when a train hurtling through the night at more than 120 km per hour slammed into a group of about 100 workers carrying out track maintenance near the city of Anqiu.

According to the 163.com news website, it was the worst train accident in China since 1997, when another collision killed 126 people.

Pictures posted at the news portal http://www.sina.com showed carriages overturned and rescue workers milling around passengers wrapped in blankets.

The local Qilu Evening News said the railway had begun a new timetable on Monday.

Xinhua said rescuers had been working to remove the wrecked coaches from the tracks to ensure traffic along the line could resume tomorrow morning.

State television said the rail line was built in 1897 and was due to be retired for all but goods trains in favour of a high-speed link to be ready in time to carry passengers from Beijing to Qingdao for the Olympic sailing events.