260 injured in China metro train crash

Four foreigners,including two Japanese,one each from Canada and the Philippines,also suffered minor injuries.

The accident second of its kind attributed to faulty signal system took place as top Indian railway officials held talks with their Chinese counterparts to explore possibilities of using China’s high speed technology back home.

Most of the injuries in today’s crash were bruises and bone fractures and there were also external head wounds,doctors said.

The crash occurred about at 2:51 pm following a signal system failure at one station on the Line 10 subway,Shanghai Shentong Metro Group Co said in a statement,adding that about 500 passengers had been evacuated from the trains.

The signal system failure at about 2:10 pm meant the trains had to be directed over the phone by subway staff rather than by electric signals and run at slower speeds,it

said.

Photos posted on weibo.com,China’s popular Twitter-like microblogging service,showed several passengers bleeding,with firefighters entering the train to rescue the injured.

Meanwhile,the subway operator offered an apology. “Today is a dark day in the history of Shanghai Metro. We feel deeply sorry for the injuries and losses of the passengers no matter what the investigation results will be,” said a statement from the metro operator.

“I was stunned,not knowing what happened. We tried to open doors and windows but couldn’t. I felt smoke in the car,” a passenger said shortly after being rescued from the train.

“The train braked suddenly… some people fell and some cried,then the automatic alarm sounded,” another passenger told Xinhua news agency.

Subway services at nine stations on the Line 10 has been halted. Local authorities have launched an investigation into the crash.

Faulty signal systems continue to plague Chinese Railways,which resulted in the bullet train crash on July 24 in Wenzhou,eastern China in which 40 people were killed and over 200 injured.

As a result of the crash,the Chinese Government has ordered all fast trains to cut down their speeds to give safety concerns a priority.

While a probe has pinpointed the blame on signal system made indigenously,it is not yet clear,what Chinese authorities were doing to rectify the flaw.

The signal system is a product of Casco Signal Ltd,a joint venture of China Railway Signal and Communication Corp and Alstom,which reportedly supplies signal systems to a number of subways in Chinese cities including Beijing,Shanghai,Tianjin and Shenzhen.

Casco was blamed for a subway train crash in Shanghai in 2009 and July 24 bullet train crash.