...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material...
on Thursday, the latest rail tragedy to strike the vast central African nation.
"Another disaster! Derailing at 3am (0100 GMT) in Tanganyika (province) near Mayibaridi. Provisional toll: 50 dead and several injured," the minister for humanitarian action, Steve Mbikayi, said in a tweet.
Witnesses at the scene and local media feared more than a hundred people could have been killed.
Victor Umba, the union head of the national rail company SNCC, said the freight train was travelling from the town of Nyunzu to the town of Niemba when two carriages fell on their sides.
"Those who died in this derailment were stowaways. It is impossible for the SNCC to provide any kind of toll," Umba told AFP. He added that the SNCC's chief was in the quiet provincial capital of Kalemie trying to find a way to raise the carriages.
"It seems that many stowaways are trapped under the derailed carriages".
Railways in the DRC have a poor record for safety, hampered by derelict tracks and decrepit locomotives, many of them dating from the 1960s.