South Africa train crash: 329 injured in collision

More than 300 passengers have been injured, 32 of them seriously, after two trains collided during rush hour in a Johannesburg suburb.

A Metrorail service en route to Pretoria slammed into a second Metrorail rail that had come to a halt in Van Riebeeck Park train station, in the northeast of the city, after suffering a mechanical fault.

A passenger on the train that was struck told local newspaper Kempton Express that the service had been at the station for around 20 minutes when the collision took place, at 5.50pm on Thursday.

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“We heard an oncoming train hooting long before the crash,” the commuter said. “People who were hanging from the doors of the moving train saw there was going to be a crash and jumped screaming out of the moving train before the impact.”

Video footage shows chaos in the aftermath of the collision, as emergency services tried to search the wreckage as passengers crammed onto packed platforms.

Metrorail Gauteng spokesperson Lillian Mofokeng said last night that 320 passengers had been taken to hospital, 32 of them suffering “serious but not critical injuries”. There were no fatalities.

She added that a board of enquiry is to be set up to investigate the circumstances that led to the crash.

Rush-hour train accidents “have been worryingly common in South Africa’s commercial hub in recent months”, the Associated Press reports.

Another collision near Johannesburg last month resulted in around 100 injuries, and around 200 people were injured in January when a Metrorail train rear-ended a stationary train on the outskirts of the city.

South Africa boasts an extensive and low-cost rail network, but the service “has been plagued by mismanagement and under-investment”, causing train use to “dwindle”, says Reuters.