Train derailment in eastern Iran kills at least 21, injures 47

A passenger train traveling through eastern Iran struck an excavator before dawn Wednesday, causing nearly half the railcars to derail, killing at least 21 people and injuring another 47, officials said.

The derailment near the desert city of Tabas was the latest disaster to strike the Islamic Republic in recent weeks as Tehran struggles under U.S. sanctions, with a return to its nuclear deal with world powers still in doubt.

The train operated by the state-run Islamic Republic Railway carried some 350 people as it traveled from Tabas, about 340 miles southeast of Tehran, to the city of Yazd. The service had begun as an overnight train out of Iran's holy city of Mashhad.

Based on images after the crash, it appeared that the train's locomotive passed the excavator but that the cars behind it hit the digger and caused the derailment. Authorities did not immediately explain how the disaster happened in the rural scrubland near a railway bridge.

“Passengers were bouncing in the car like balls in the air,” one unnamed injured passenger told Iranian state television.

The state-run IRNA news agency gave the casualty figures, citing emergency officials.

Rescue teams with ambulances and helicopters arrived in the remote area, where communication is poor. More than a dozen people suffered critical injuries, with some transferred to hospitals, officials said.

Aerial footage of the site of the disaster showed train cars on their side, with some rescuers running around the scene as they tried to care for those injured.

State TV later aired images from a hospital where the injured received treatment. One of those injured told the broadcaster that they felt the train suddenly brake and then slow before the derailment.

The derailment happened some 30 miles outside Tabas.

The report said the crash was under investigation. It wasn't immediately clear why an excavator was close to the train track at night. One official suggested that it could have been part of a repair project.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi offered condolences and announced that an investigation would be undertaken into its causes.

Iran's worst train disaster was in 2004, when a runaway train loaded with gasoline, fertilizer, sulfur and cotton crashed near the historic city of Neyshabur, killing some 320 people, injuring 460 others and causing damage to five villages. In 2016, a train collision in northern Iran killed at least 43 people and injured about 100.

Iran has about 8,700 miles of railway lines throughout a country about two and a half times the size of Texas. Its rail system sends both people and goods across the country, particularly in rural areas.

Iran also has about 17,000 annual deaths on its highways, one of the world’s worst traffic safety records. The high toll is blamed on wide disregard for traffic laws, unsafe vehicles and inadequate emergency services.

Iran, already straining under U.S. sanctions over its collapsed nuclear deal, has been mourning the deaths of at least 41 people killed in a building collapse in the country's southwest.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.