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At least 50 killed in Japan train derailment
Railway officials said the cause was not immediately apparent, but that calculations had shown that a train could derail if it were travelling at nearly twice the speed limit at the site where the accident occurred. Rescuers in hard hats clustered near the twisted remains of the front two cars, one of which had been smashed to less than half its normal width, using cutters and ropes to get inside. Passenger Tatsuya Akashi, who had been on his way to work, told public broadcaster NHK it felt as if the train had speeded up as it went around a curve. "I thought there were some strange swings, and then the train derailed. No one knew what happened and everyone kept screaming," he said. It was the worst train accident in Japan since 1963 when about 160 people were killed in a multiple train collision at Yokohama, near Tokyo. OVER-SHOT STATION "There was no side to the car any more, and bleeding people were crawling out. I heard others screaming 'it hurts, it hurts'", a woman in her 20s told NHK.
Operator West Japan Railway Co. (JR West) said the cause
of the derailment was under investigation but it confirmed that the train had
over-shot the station at its previous stop.
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