PETARUKAN, Indonesia – A train crashed into another parked at a railway station in central Indonesia early Saturday, killing at least 36 people and injuring dozens, many seriously, officials and witnesses said.
Rescuers spent hours searching through the mangled wreckage for trapped survivors of the accident, which occurred just before 3 a.m., as many passengers were sleeping.
A train from the capital, Jakarta, plowed into the rear of a train that was sitting at a station in Petarukan, a coastal city in Central Java province, said Transportation Ministry spokesman Bambang Ervan.
The force of the crash knocked several carriages off the track, and twisted debris from the train littered the area.
"Bloody corpses were hanging from the carriages," said Anwar Sumarno, a 24-year-old university student who had been sitting near the front of the stopped train.
"The injured were screaming in the darkness, but there was nothing we could do," he said. "Everyone was in a state of shock."
It took almost an hour for rescue workers and ambulances to arrive.
Villagers and railway officials used their bare hands and bamboo sticks to search for survivors. Eventually, heavy cranes arrived to help move slabs of metal, helping speed rescue efforts.
Investigators were trying to determine if human error was to blame.
"It may also have been mechanical," said Ervan, the transport ministry spokesman. "We're checking to see if the signals of the parked train were working properly."
By early afternoon Saturday, only one body was still trapped inside an upended car, said Marsono, a rescuer at the scene. He, like many Indonesians, uses only one name.
Thirty-five other bodies were taken to three nearby hospitals, said Tri Yuniasari, a spokeswoman for the Hasyim Ashari hospital who was helping keep tallies.
Among the victims were Bayu Sakti, a 33-year-old army sergeant, and his 29-year-old wife and 4-year-old son.
"It'd been six months since they'd come home," the man's 60-year-old mother, Agatha, told the news portal Detik.com."We were waiting for them."
More than 40 people were hurt, including several children, doctors and nurses said. Some had severe injuries and broken bones.
Indonesia — with a reputation for poor safety standards and maintenance — has been hit by a series of plane, train and ferry accidents in recent years that have killed hundreds.
Just an hour after Saturday's collision, another train crashed in the town of Solo, also in Central Java, killing at least one person, according to Ervan and officials at a nearby hospital.
