The province’s Red Crescent director, Hassan Shokrollahi, said the remote location of the crash site, between Semnan and Damghan, the next major town, had complicated rescue efforts. “Due to the difficulty of access, only our helicopter has managed to reach the scene,” he said. The injured were airlifted to hospitals in Semnan and Damghan.
The Tehran-to-Mashhad line was briefly closed to allow an investigation into the cause of the crash, said Sadegh Sokri, spokesman for Iran’s railways. A collision on the same line between a freight train and a passenger train left two dead and 30 injured in June 2014.
President Hassan Rouhani called for “all technical, administrative and preventive measures to be taken to prevent the recurrence of such an accident”.
(Sourced from agencies, feature image courtesy:news.com.au)
