Traffic has been restored at Chenzhou Railway Station as of 12 pm after two trains collided at 2:34 am this morning, killing at least three people and leaving more than 60 injured. All injured passengers were sent to local hospitals.

Rescuers work at the site of a collision between two passenger trains at the Chenzhou railway station, central China's Hunan province, June 29, 2009.  [Photo: CFP]

The K9017 train going from Changsha to Shenzhen collided with the K9063 train headed from Tongren to Shenzhen. The cause of the accident is still under investigation.

South-to-north traffic had already resumed at about 7 am as train K9076 left the station for Changde, said the city’s publicity department. North-to-south transportation also resumed later in the morning.

The Xinhua news agency reported that Beijing-Guangzhou Railway artery traffic is not being affected by the accident.

According to the city’s fire services department, the rescue operation ended at 7:35 am. Fifteen people who were trapped, including four local residents whose house collapsed due to the impact by one of the trains, were successfully rescued, the China News Service reported.

Sources from the Ministry of Railway denied the link between the collision and a change to the railway route map, according to Beijing’s evening newspaper Fazhiwanbao. The new route map is scheduled to be in use from July 1.

Faulty operation after a change in the route map was blamed for a train collision last year in which 72 passengers died in east China’s Shandong Province. Five carriages and the locomotive of train K9017 derailed after it hit train K9063, which caused its locomotive and two carriages to also derail in the accident.

Minister of Railway Liu Zhijun, who was recently punished for last year’s fatal train collision, traveled to Chenzhou, located in the south of Hunan Province, 300 kilometers from the provincial capital Changsha, to oversee the rescue work.

About 300 paramilitary policemen, 100 firefighters and 650 police officers have been sent to maintain order at the scene of the accident.

(China Daily June 29, 2009)