Last night, a passenger train heading south from Hanoi slammed into a truck at a level crossing just after midnight.
As Tuoi Tre reports, the incident occurred just outside Thanh Hoa City at 12:30am. Both the train driver, Nguyen The Hung, and his assistant were killed in the accident, while 10 other passengers were also injured, although this number may rise.
The SE19 train, which was heading from Hanoi to Da Nang, was carrying 400 passengers. Eight of its carriages, including the train’s locomotive, fell into a nearby paddy field after the collision. It’s lucky that more people were not harmed in the incident.
Thanh Hoa authorities sent out a search and rescue team to help injured passengers make their way to hospital, while other passengers were transported to a nearby train station to continue their journey.
Local police summoned the two level-crossing assistants who were working that night. An investigation is under way to find out exactly what happened.
This video from VTV shows the extent of the damage:
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This accident is far from the first of its kind. Railway accidents in Vietnam are quite common. In a similar accident in 2015 at Dien Sanh Station, a train hit a truck stuck on a level crossing, killing one and leaving four seriously injured.
In 2010, 451 railway accidents were reported across the country's railway network, causing 211 deaths and 284 injuries. A full 90% of those accidents occurred at level crossings. There have been 83 reports of rail accidents across Vietnam in only the first three months of 2018.
[Photo via Zing]
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