Two passenger trains collided in an accident that killed three people and injured 60 as train carriages were derailed and nearby houses knocked over, said Chinese state media.
The pre-dawn crash occurred in Hunan province when a train going from the provincial capital Changsha to the southern city of Shenzhen collided with another Shenzhen-bound train, said state TV.
The China Central TV (CCTV) newscast showed a tangle
of red, white and blue train cars on their sides at the station at Chenzhou, where the collision occurred at 2.34am (1834 GMT Sunday).
"One train compartment has been crushed out of shape. Debris and the belongings
of the passengers are scattered everywhere," said a CCTV reporter as the camera showed seats ripped from the floor and the ground littered with plastic bottles and scraps of paper. Rescue workers wearing hard-hats worked at the scene, shouting instructions as police and medics crammed into collapsed train compartments.
A group of men were shown carrying a body covered in a pink quilt on a stretcher.
The report said two people were killed on the trains while one died when their home was damaged.
Workers were busy cleaning up the area of rubble from the ruined walls of two nearby houses and repairing power lines, said CCTV.
An official at the railway ministry said the cause was under investigation.
The official Xinhua News Agency said the railway minister had travelled to Chenzhou to oversee rescue operations.
Telephone calls to the Chenzhou station, the city's government offices and main hospital all rang unanswered.
Last year, 72 people were killed and hundreds were injured when a high-speed passenger train jumped its tracks and crashed into another train in eastern Shandong province.
The accident was the worst train crash in China since 1997, when 126 were killed in Hunan, the China Daily newspaper reported last year, citing the Xinhua news agency.
