North Korea blames train blast on `carelessness', as aid workers head to site

Saturday, April 24th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

DANDONG, China (AP) _ Aid workers rushed to the scene of a devastating train blast Saturday after North Korea made unprecedented pleas for help. Officials blamed the disaster on carelessness, saying downed power lines ignited a cargo of volatile ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

Normally secretive North Korean officials told foreign diplomats and relief organizations that hundreds of people were killed and thousands injured in Thursday's explosion in Ryongchon, near the Chinese border.

The numbers were expected to climb amid witness accounts of a massive eruption. Chinese villagers 12 miles away said they felt the force of the blast and saw a black, mushroom-shaped cloud over the horizon.

John Sparrow, a Red Cross spokesman in Beijing, said Saturday that damage was spread out over a radius of 2 1/2 miles.

``The railroad station and the immediate surroundings were obliterated,'' said Sparrow, who received information from an aid worker at the scene.

Jay Matta, a Red Cross worker in Pyongyang, described ``a crater as though a fireball'' had hit, Sparrow said.

In a conference call later, Matta described a rubble-strewn scene of devastation, with buildings ``totally flattened.''

Buildings left standing within a few hundred yards of the site had blown out windows, damaged roofs and showed signs of scorching, Matta said in a conference call.

In its first statement on the disaster, North Korea's official news agency said the catastrophic explosion in the railway town was touched off by ``electrical contact caused by carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer.'' The chemical is sometimes used in explosives.

Separately, the Chinese news agency Xinhua quoted North Korean officials as saying trains loaded with oil and chemicals collided and were ignited by a downed power line.

Few foreign journalists are allowed into North Korea. But in the first report datelined from the site, Xinhua said at least 154 people were confirmed dead, half of them students, and 1,300 were injured.

In an uncharacteristically candid report, the North's news agency KCNA said ``the damage is very serious'' and expressed appreciation for promises of international humanitarian assistance.

Those offers came in the hours after the North issued a rare appeal for foreign help, inviting aid workers to come see the disaster site in Ryongchon, a city with chemical and metalworking plants and a reported population of 130,000.

U.S. defense officials have said that the worst damage from the blast extended at least 200 yards from the railway station. Diplomats and aid groups were told by the North that thousands of apartments and houses were destroyed or damaged.

On Saturday, an aid convoy was headed to the site carrying antibiotics, bandages, painkillers and other supplies _ all of which are scarce in the impoverished country, Sparrow said.

``We are fearful that they could be overwhelmed by the large numbers of injured,'' he said, adding that many people might have been made homeless and would need tents and other shelter.

North Korea restricts the movement of foreigners, and groups that distribute aid to alleviate its food shortages are barred from some areas.

Aid workers have been allowed to visit areas struck by drought or floods in recent years, but the government has never arranged such quick access to the scene of a disaster like the train explosion.

Those visiting the site Saturday were not allowed to carry mobile communications, said Brendan McDonald, head of the U.N. office for coordination in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.

The World Health Organization said it did not expect to hear from its representative until he returned to Pyongyang on Saturday night.

Chinese villagers near the North Korean border said they could see and hear the blast in Ryongchon.

``I first saw a big fireball. Then I heard the sound of the explosion. Then I saw smoke come up,'' said a fisherman in the village of Anmin. He gave only his family name, Qu. ``We were very scared.''

A shopkeeper in Anmin, who gave his name as Mr. Shen, said he saw ``black smoke, just like a mushroom cloud after a nuclear bomb.'' North Korean officials told Britain's ambassador that several hundred people were thought to have died and several thousand were injured, a British Foreign Office spokesman said.

North Korea's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Kim Chang Guk told Associated Press Television News he didn't have details about the explosion.

``But I think it is very serious because our government held out its hand to the world community for help,'' he said in New York. ``It means it is a great incident.''

China and South Korea offered assistance. And U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington was evaluating the situation to see ``if there is a need or an opportunity for the United States to help.''

The blast leveled the train station, a school and apartments, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said, quoting Chinese witnesses. It said there were about 500 people in the station at the time.

South Korea's Chosun Ilbo newspaper, citing a South Korean intelligence source, said a U.S. spy satellite photograph showed damage mostly in densely populated neighborhoods east of the station.

``Hospitals are jam-packed with people injured,'' Chosun Ilbo quoted a Chinese witness as saying.

There was no sign in Dandong, a Chinese border city about 12 miles from Ryongchon, of injured North Koreans. But the city's three biggest hospitals were preparing for a possible surge of patients.