BOUKNADEL, Morocco: This picture taken yesterday shows the scene of a rail accident in this Moroccan town between the capital Rabat and the port city of Kenitra to its north. – AFP

RABAT: A passenger train derailed yesterday near the Moroccan capital Rabat killing at least seven people and injuring over 80 others, officials said. “Regrettably, seven people died,” regional health director Abdelmoula Boulamizat told the official MAP news agency. National railway company boss Mohamed Rabie Khlie earlier gave a death toll of six, including the driver and his assistant, and said 86 people were injured. Seven seriously injured people were receiving treatment in Rabat military hospital, with four in intensive care, MAP reported.

A short statement from the ONCF national railway company said “an investigation has been opened to determine the causes of the accident” and pledged to provide more information when it had it. The crash occurred some 20 km north of Rabat between the towns of Kenitra and Sale. An AFP photographer saw rescue teams work to retrieve bodies from the overturned train after its carriages had toppled across the tracks.

“I heard the very loud sound of the accident and rushed to the site, where I saw people screaming in fear and pain, while others were jumping out of the train windows,” a witness told Reuters. Many of the injured were taken to the Moulay Abdellah hospital in Sale, near Rabat. “Some people lost their arms and legs in the accident,” a medical source there said. Relatives of the victims wept at the hospital.

Railway boss Khlie said that such deadly accidents were rare in the North African country, pointing to a crash in 1993 that killed 15 people as “the last one”. King Mohammed VI said he would pay the burial costs of the victims and for the treatment of the injured, according to a royal cabinet statement. – Agencies