A new transport tragedy left at least 75 dead and 125 injured in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) at the end of the week, when a freight train loaded with stowaways derailed in the province of Lualaba, in the south-east. from the country. A first assessment of the accident which occurred late Thursday March 10 reported two days later at least 60 dead – men, women and children – and 52 injured. On March 13, after the visit to the site of the derailment by the director general of the National Railway Company of Congo (SNCC) Fabien Mutomb, he “communicated the official toll of 75 deaths and 125 injured, including 28 with serious trauma referred to specialized medical centers”said the Congolese Ministry of Communication on Twitter.
#RDC At the end of his inspection visit to the site of the train derailment, the DG of the #SNCCFabien Mutomb communicated the official toll of 75 deaths and 125 injuries, including 28 with serious trauma referred to specialized medical centers for appropriate care. pic.twitter.com/gOyZkPfp0q
— Ministry of Communication and Media/DRC (@Com_mediasRDC) March 13, 2022
According to an AFP database, this rail accident appears to be the deadliest in the world over the past two years and the third deadliest in Africa in ten years. The last such disaster in the DRC dates back to 2014: a freight train carrying several hundred people derailed in Katongola, Katanga (southeast), killing 136 people.
The damaged convoy on March 10, made up of 15 wagons, was also a freight train but on board which several hundred stowaways had taken place, Manyonga Ndambo, director in charge of infrastructure at the SNCC, told AFP. The train came from Luena, in the neighboring province of Haut-Lomami, and was heading for the mining town of Tenke. It derailed at 11:50 p.m. near the village of Buyofwe, about 200 km from Kolwezi and 600 km from Lubumbashi, “in a place where there are ravines”in which 7 of the 15 wagons fell, he added.
The reasons for the accident were not immediately specified by the authorities, but the dilapidated state of the rails was mentioned as one of the probable causes. According to a communication from the SNCC transmitted to the press on March 13, the provincial Minister of the Interior Déodat Kapenda, who accompanied the manager of the company to the site of the derailment, estimated that the presumed cause was “the sudden cut in traction”followed by “the drift of the wagon train”. The investigation should determine the reason for this “traction cut”. The director general of the SNCC for his part deplored that there were deaths “in the accident of this freight train, which is not suitable for travellers”. He mentioned among the possible causes of the disaster “the overload of the train, due to the presence of stowaways on the wagons, in violation of the rail traffic regulations”.
#RDC #AccidentTrain
The President of the Republic learned with sadness of the death of 75 compatriots and several injured in the train accident which occurred in Kitenta in the territory of Lubudi in Lualaba.
The Head of State presents his condolences to the relatives of the victims.— DRC Presidency (@Presidence_RDC) March 13, 2022
Often, for lack of passenger trains or passable roads, passengers take freight trains to travel long distances in the DRC, a country of 2.3 million km². They also travel in overloaded boats on lakes and rivers, where shipwrecks are also common. The DRC has only a few thousand kilometers of paved roads, mainly on the Matadi-Kinshasa-Kikwit axis in the west for import-export, and Kolwezi-Lubumbashi-Kasumbalesa and Zambia in the southeast for transport. export of minerals.