TOKYO: A train hit and killed four workers in Japan on Thursday, authorities said, a rare incident in a country renowned for its normally excellent rail safety record.<\/p>\n
Local media reported that the four workers were removing weeds from the train tracks at Shin-Kanuma Station in Kanuma city north of Tokyo when the express train struck them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe four were confirmed dead,\u201d a fire department official told AFP.<\/p>\n
Another official said that when emergency services arrived, three workers were trapped under the train, while one was on the platform.<\/p>\n
The workers, all men, were in their 50s and 60s, Jiji Press reported. None of the roughly 50 passengers on the train suffered injuries.<\/p>\n
The six-car train was the Spacia X express on the Tobu Nikko Line, connecting Greater Tokyo with popular tourist destination Nikko in the Tochigi region, media reports said.<\/p>\n
The Tokyo-bound train was approaching its stop at Shin-Kanuma when the accident occurred, broadcaster NHK said, citing the operator.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe heard this loud rumbling noise. Then the train came to an emergency stop with such sudden braking that it was impossible to stand,\u201d a 40-year-old man who was on the train told NHK.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was an announcement saying \u2018we will stop to identify where the noise came from\u2019, and then we were left unable to get off for a while,\u201d the man was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
Local media reported that the workers were part of a seven-person crew removing weeds from around the train tracks.<\/p>\n
Japanese railways have one of the best safety records in the world.<\/p>\n
Fatal accidents from malfunctioning trains are extremely rare in Japan due to high levels of maintenance and training, and use of advanced technology.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s deadliest accident this century was in April 2005 when a rush-hour commuter train derailed and smashed into an apartment building in Amagasaki, in the country\u2019s west, killing 107 people and injured more than 500 others.<\/p>\n
An accident involving a derailed cargo train and two passenger trains killed 161 people in 1963.<\/p>\n
There has never been a passenger fatality from a derailment or a collision on Japan\u2019s network of \u201cshinkansen\u201d bullet trains since they entered service in 1964.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TOKYO: A train hit and killed four workers in Japan on Thursday, authorities said, a rare incident in a country renowned for its normally excellent rail safety record. Local media reported that the four workers were removing weeds from the train tracks at Shin-Kanuma Station in Kanuma city north of Tokyo when the express train …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101913,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101914,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101896\/revisions\/101914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}