No fewer than 55 persons have died in a train accident in Cameroon, the government said in a communique read on state television.
575 people were injured when the train, travelling from Yaounde to the economic hub of Douala, came off the rails near the central city of Eseka at around midday Friday.
“There was a loud noise. I looked back and the wagons behind us left the rails and started rolling over and over. There was a lot of smoke,” said a Reuters journalist travelling in a wagon near the front of the train.
“We have received between 60 and 70 bodies at the station this morning,” a railway official who asked not to be identified told AFP in Yaounde on Saturday.
The train was crammed with people because a collapsed bridge had made travelling the same route by road impossible.
“Some of the wounded are arriving unconscious. We think the death toll will rise,” said the railway official, adding that the injured had been taken to various hospitals in the capital.
Passengers’ relatives thronged the city’s main hospital to look for their loved ones.