June 17, 2022
DERAILED — Three of the derailed cars can be seen. Above, the excavator was knocked over and ended up with its tracks pinned to the side of a car that was not derailed. Below, a railway map pinpoints the site of the derailment near Tabas.
seen at left. Above, the excavator was knocked over and ended up with its tracks pinned to the side of a car that was not derailed. Below, a railway map pinpoints the site of the derailment near Tabas
But in the previous month, two other trains derailed in Sistan va Baluchestan province
Those were freight trains on the new Pakistan-to-Turkey route that Iran has been heavily promoting. No deaths or injuries were reported.
The passenger train that crashed in Khorasan South province was carrying 430 passengers on the overnight route from Mashhad to Yazd when the accident occurred about dawn. The derailment was about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Tabas.
Video taken later from a rescue helicopter overhead showed the 11-car train with four cars still on the tracks, three derailed but upright and four others derailed and overturned, with two of the overturned cars separated from the others.
There were also dozens injured, many of them seriously. Rescue workers said most of the dead and injured were in the four cars that overturned.
Officials said the driver of the excavator had positioned the excavator too close to the tracks. The driver was among those seriously injured.
Mohammad-Hassan Esmaili, the chief investigator, said the excavator was not stopped on the tracks and speculated that the excavator’s boom or digger may have been hit first by the train.
Iran’s worst train disaster came in 2004, when a runaway train loaded with gasoline, fertilizer, sulfur and cotton careened for dozens of miles until it derailed and blew up near Neyshabur, killing 320 people, injuring 460 others and damaging five villages.
