20100622
reuters

A train in Congo Republic derailed en route to the capital Brazzaville, killing around 50 passengers as four of its wagons plunged into a ravine by the track, a national rail company source told Reuters on Tuesday.

The accident happened late on Monday night after the train left the coastal town of Pointe-Noire on the Chemin de Fer Congo Ocean (CFCO) line, a rail link which has seen at least two serious accidents in recent years.

"Unfortunately the train took a corner that turned out to be fatal," said the rail company source, who declined to be identified because he was unauthorised to speak publicly.

The source said the accident happened near the station of Yanga, around 60 km (40 miles) from Pointe-Noire.

At least 50 people were killed on the same line in 2001, many of them burned to death, when two trains collided at Mvougounti around 75 km (45 miles) east of Pointe-Noire.

Eight years earlier, about 100 people died when a passenger train slammed into a freight train, also at Mvougounti.

The lack of roads and the dysfunctional railway system between the Central African oil producer's main towns make travel have been a major contributed to the high cost of food and imported goods in the capital and throughout neighbouring land-locked nations.

Chinese engineers started work late last year on a $500 million road linking the oil hub of Pointe-Noire with the capital Brazzaville, a project that will have to negotiate this forests and steep mountains.

Congo, which has long exported millions of barrels of oil but remains mostly poor and suffers from poor infrastructure, is seeking to diversify its economy as oil reserves wind down.