Train collision in Indonesia kills seven as rescuers work to reach survivors | Indonesia

Rescuers were racing to reach survivors after two trains collided overnight outside the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Tuesday morning, killing at least seven people and injuring scores of others.

A spokesman for the state-owned KAI railway company told local television in the early hours that rescue teams were trying to reach two people still trapped alive in the rubble.

Anna Purba brings the death toll to seven and 81 injured.

One survivor described the moment a long-distance train crashed into the commuter train he was traveling in, trapping people inside the shattered carriages.

“I thought I was going to die,” Sausan Sarifah, 29, said from her bed at RSUD Bekasi hospital, where she was taken with a broken arm and a deep cut on her thigh.

He said that on his way home from work, his train stopped at Bekasi Timur station, about 25 km (15 miles) from Jakarta.

“It all happened very quickly, within a second,” Sausan said.

“Two announcements were heard from the commuter train. Everyone was ready to get off and then suddenly the sound of the locomotive was heard, it was very loud,” he said.

“There was no time to get out and everyone was piled up inside the train. I don’t know what condition the person under me was in.”

He said he was afraid of suffocating to death in the mass of people and worried that some trapped underneath might not survive.

“Thank God I was at the top so I was able to evacuate quickly,” Sausan said.

According to Franoto Wibowo, a spokesman for the railway operator KAI, it appeared that a taxi had hit the commuter train at a level crossing, causing the train to stop on the tracks and crash.

There were chaotic scenes at the station following the accident; Rescue workers shouted for oxygen tanks as ambulances waited in a serpentine queue, lights flashing.

An AFP reporter at the scene witnessed people being taken from the rubble on stretchers and loaded into waiting ambulances, while hundreds of onlookers, some seemingly in shock, looked on.

While rescue teams worked to save scores of people trapped in crushed train carriages, Indonesian Parliament Speaker Sufmi Dasco Ahmad said at the scene that the death toll could continue to rise.

Franoto told Kompas TV that the army, the fire department, the national search and rescue agency and the Red Cross were assisting in the evacuation efforts.

Jakarta police chief Asep Edi Suheri said the long-distance train hit the last female-only carriage of the commuter train.

According to Purba, all the victims were on the commuter train and all about 240 passengers on the other train were evacuated safely.

The Jakarta search and rescue agency said rescue teams were “conducting the evacuation process using rescue equipment to rescue trapped victims from the wrecked train structures.”

It was stated that the collision caused “serious damage to several train carriages”.

Eva Sandalyeci, 39, said that she immediately went to RSUD hospital when she heard that her sister-in-law, whom she named Fira, only 27, was injured in the accident.

Arrived at a frantic medical triage scene. “The doctor told us to be patient, there are many people whose condition is worse than my aunt’s,” he said.

The last major train crash in the Southeast Asian country killed four crew members and injured nearly two dozen people elsewhere in West Java province in January 2024.