Aid workers describe scenes of total devastation after Korean train blast

NORTH KOREA: The blast which ripped apart the North Korean town of Ryongchon last Thursday occurred at 10 minutes past midday…

NORTH KOREA: The blast which ripped apart the North Korean town of Ryongchon last Thursday occurred at 10 minutes past midday as children were on their way home from schools which were completely destroyed in the train explosion, writes Clifford Coonan Beijing

"The elementary school nearby let its children out at noontime. So there were a lot of children walking around in the street near the site of the explosion, which would explain why so many children were injured," Mr Tony Banbury, the World Food Programme's regional director for Asia, who visited the site on Sunday, said yesterday.

He was speaking at a news briefing in Beijing, where the United Nations' agency made an urgent appeal for 1,000 tonnes of food to feed survivors. He described scenes of pure horror at the site of the explosion and fire, which killed at least 161 people, injured 1,300 and destroyed 1,850 homes.

"When we arrived at the blast site, we saw absolute devastation, homes totally flattened, a very large crater. Offhand, I would guess you would fit close to four city buses in the crater caused by the explosion," Mr Banbury said.

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"We saw a number of families searching for their belongings, what was left of them, and then loading what little they could find on to carts and moving out of town, going to find new accommodation elsewhere.

"It was a very sad and poignant sight. These people have so very little as it is, and they all of a sudden had a lot less and were moving into an uncertain future."

Mr Banbury and his team arrived in the town on Sunday after a 10-year drive on the back of a truck laden with seven tonnes of food. When they arrived, the two bulldozers and two trench-diggers which had been assisting the rescue efforts had broken down.

"They were being repaired on the spot. So all the clean-up was being done by hand, with shovels loading debris on to trucks," Mr Banbury said.

There were worse scenes ahead when the WFP team went to the provincial hospital in Sinuiju, the first international team to do so. "We were given full access, allowed to go wherever we wanted in the hospital. We spent our time with the most severely wounded patients," Mr Banbury said. "The most common and serious wounds that these patients had sustained were facial blast wounds. People who had the misfortune to be facing in the direction of the explosion when it occurred had all kinds of glass and debris, dirt, pebbles, rubble literally blown into their faces at a very high velocity."

The disaster has forced the WFP to dip into supplies intended for others in the impoverished communist state to provide about 2½ tonnes of biscuits, wheat and enriched vegetable oil - enough food for several hundred hospital patients and their families for two days. It also delivered about 4½ tonnes of food to the blast site for people who had lost family members and those whose homes were destroyed.

The International Red Cross has launched an emergency appeal to raise $1.2 million to buy food, clothing and cooking fuel for up to 10,000 people affected by the explosion.

North Korea is desperately short of fuel and electricity as well as food. Japan, Russia, Australia and the United States are among the countries which have already offered to send supplies. Neighbouring China has dispatched truckloads of tents, blankets and food across its border during the past few days.

Mr Banbury said that the North Korean authorities were grateful for the aid. "On Sunday, we wanted to get food to the people. The government facilitated that. We received excellent co-operation from the government."

North Korea's Stalinist government relaxed its normally intense secrecy as it pleaded for international help in the aftermath of the disaster, which it blamed on workers who had caused wagons carrying oil and chemicals to come in contact with power lines, touching off the massive explosion.

But North Korea refused to permit Red Cross aid trucks from South Korea travel across the Demilitarised Zone which has separated the two countries since the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended without a peace treaty.