By NNN-Xinhua,
Jinan, China : The death toll has climbed to 66 and 247 were hospitalized after an early Monday train collision in east China’s Shandong Province, railway authorities confirmed.
Ministry of Railways said 51 of the injured passengers were in critical condition.
Among the injured passengers were four French nationals, all of whom have been hospitalized with bone fractures, a spokesman with the provincial foreign affairs office said.
Their identities were not known.
The casualties were from two passengers trains, one of which was en route from Beijing to Qingdao, a famous summer resort in Shandong and venue of the Olympic sailing competition, and the other, from Shandong’s Yantai to Xuzhou in eastern Jiangsu Province.
The train from Beijing, coded T195, derailed in the city of Zibo in Shandong Province at around 4:40 a.m. About 10 carriages toppled into a ditch.
The derailed train hit train 5034 and caused the latter to veer off its tracks, too.