By Xinhua,
Bangkok : One passenger died and 13 others were injured after a train derailed in Thailand’s southern province of Songkhla, while suspended train service in the deep south is expected to resume Sunday evening, officials of the State Railway of Thailand (SRT) said Sunday.
The accident occurred Saturday night when a train from Songkhla’ s Phatthalung district enroute to Sungai Kolok district derailed near a railway station in a village of Songkhla province, Thai News Agency quoted SRT as saying.
Fourteen injured passengers were sent to a hospital in the province’s economic hub city Hat Yai, but one man died shortly of multiple injuries to his abdomen, officials said.
An expectant mother traveling on the bus gave birth to a child after sent to the hospital. Both the mother and her newborn child were in safe condition.
Several hundred passengers were stranded at Hat Yai railway station when two trains were unable to continue their journey as crews of railway laborers began repairs of the railway tracks and lifted the derailed locomotive and four passenger carriages, the SRT officials said.
Normal train services were expected to be restored Sunday afternoon. Authorities are investigating the cause of the accident.
Songkhla is neighboring Thailand’s three southernmost provinces, Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani, that have been troubled by insurgent violence since early 2004, which killed over 3,000 people in the region.
Thai authorities have blamed southern Muslim separatists for the unrest, in which bombings, drive-by shootings, arsons and sabotage to southern railways have frequently taken place in the three southernmost provinces and sometimes spread to nearby areas like Songkhla.
No evidence by now has linked Saturday’s accident to the southern unrest.