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Stowaway Passengers Killed In DR Congo Train Disaster

A freight train derailed in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, killing between 10 and 50 people stowing away onboard according to conflicting reports, in the latest rail tragedy to strike the vast central African nation.

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A freight train derailed in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, killing between 10 and 50 people stowing away on-board according to conflicting reports, in the latest rail tragedy to strike the vast central African nation.

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The accident occurred when several of the train’s carriages tipped over in a remote area in Tanganyika province at around 6am (0500 GMT).

Estimates of the death toll have varied widely.

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The minister for humanitarian action, Steve Mbikayi, gave the first toll as 50 dead.

But the provincial governor, Zoe Kabila, who is the brother of former president Joseph Kabila, then tweeted: “Correction… provisional toll 10 dead, 30 injured and three rail cars overturned.”

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And the UN’s mission in DRC told AFP that Indonesian peacekeepers at the scene had identified 23 people killed and 14 wounded, as of 1500 GMT.

Such confusion about numbers is common in the conflict-riven country, where even the population of 80 million is a rough estimate – the last census was carried out in 1984.

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But witnesses at the scene have consistently said the death toll was high.

Stowaways are common on trains in DR Congo, which has only a few thousand kilometers of paved roads to cover the country’s 2.3 million square kilometers.

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With service by passenger trains patchy to non-existent, often people illegally stow away on freight trains as they have no other means to traverse such long distances.

Railways in DRC have a poor record for safety, hampered by derelict tracks and decrepit locomotives, many of them dating from the 1960’s.

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Like many state companies in DR Congo, the national rail company SNCC is on the brink of bankruptcy.

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