HIGHLIGHTS: Passengers Leap from Speeding to Train in Desperate Attempt to Save their lives||Train Goes off Railway Tracks Rolling Backwards & Smashing into Another Train||Two Days of Mourning When Flags Would Fly at Half-mast|| STORY: At least 200 people were killed and hundreds more were hurt on Monday when a runaway passenger train, hurtling backwards down the track, slammed into a freight train in central Tanzania, officials said.(Read photo caption)

Survivors described scenes of horror with passengers leaping from the speeding train in a desperate attempt to save their lives, and the driver running through packed carriages screaming that the train, with 1,000 people aboard, was out of control.
Hospital officials said the death toll was at least 200.

The passenger train was climbing a hill when it suffered a mechanical failure and rolled backwards toward an approaching freight train, said Isaac Mwakajila, assistant director-general of Tanzanian Railway Corporation.

"The train went off the railway tracks backwards and smashed into another train behind it. It had 22 cabins, and 21 of them fell off the rail tracks," he said

Survivors said the driver lost control as the train rolled back down the hill for about 30 minutes before slamming into the freight train.

TWO DAYS OF MOURNING

Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa visited Dodoma hospital to comfort the injured. Tanzanian state radio said he was pained to see children crying in the wards looking for their parents.
Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye visited the crash scene and later announced two days of official mourning, when flags would fly at half-mast.

PHOTO CAPTION

At least 100 people were killed and hundreds injured June 24, 2002 when a passenger train and a cargo train collided in central Tanzania, witnesses said. 'I counted 100 bodies lying on the ground next to the wreckage,' said Daniel Musangya, a journalist working for African Rural Press in Action. (MapInfo, NASA-Visisble Earth/Reuters Graphic)