“Two passenger trains have collided in eastern China.” From Reuters:
Dozens were injured or killed when two passenger trains collided in eastern China early on Monday and 10 carriages toppled into a ditch, the official Xinhua news agency, a doctor and two hospitals said.
One train was en route from Beijing to eastern city of Qingdao when the accident happened in Zibo, Shandong province. The second train was travelling between Yantai, in Shandong, and Xuzhou in the neighbouring province of Jiangsu.
“More than 80 people are injured, both seriously and not as seriously,” an official at the Number 148 Hospital in Zhoucun district told Reuters.
An official at another hospital, the Zhoucun District People’s Hospital in Zibo city, said injured passengers had been admitted, but did not say how many or if there had been any deaths.
Witnesses and a government spokesman also said there were heavy casualties in the collision in Shandong which caused the carriages to topple into a ditch, Xinhua reported.
The following are instructions on how to handle this news from Party propaganda officials to major Chinese online news websites and blog hosting portals soon after the accident happened, according to this Chinese blog:
“About reports related to ‘Passenger train T195 collides with passenger train 5034’，all websites can only use information from Xinhua and other major media belonging to the Central Committee. Do not post this item in prominent positions, let it naturally be pushed down (on websites, by other subsequent news items), do not allow comments, do not open specific topic pages, do not put this news at the top of online forum or blogs, do not recommend it in any way.”
“关于’T195与5034次旅客列车相撞’有关报道，各网站只转载新华社等中央主要新闻媒体的消息，不放要闻区，自然滚动，不开跟帖，不开专题，论坛和博客等不置顶、不推荐。 ”
UPDATED at 23:00 pm April 27: Apparently, these instructions have been somewhat changed. This news is now in a prominent position on all major online news portal, such as news.sina.com, news.sohu.com and news.163.com, and comments are selectively open as well.
Photos are from creader.net and dwnews.com:
See also an AP report, “Some slept, some stood before deadly derailment in China.” and a CCTV news report (via AP video, in Chinese) which has footage of the crash site:
