SULAIMANI (ESTA) — 18 deaths were reported and 86 others were injured on Wednesday after a passenger train derailed in eastern Iran state television said.
The train, with 383 passengers, was bound for the city of Yazd when it collided with an excavator before going off the rails 50 km from Tabas where it had begun its journey, a railway official told state news agency IRNA.
Five of the train’s 11 carriages had tipped over in the early-morning accident, State TV said.
Jafar Miadfar, head of Iran’s National Medical Emergency Organization, said on TV that so far 18 of the dead passengers had been identified. All but six of the injured had been released from the hospital, he said.
