A crowded Japanese commuter train derailed today and hurtled into an apartment building, killing at least 56 people and injuring hundreds in the country's worst rail accident in over 40 years.
Workers struggled into the night to rescue people trapped in crumpled wreckage and twisted metal in the first-floor car park of the building, located just 6 metres (20 feet) from the tracks in a suburb of Osaka city.
"From what rescuers have been able to see, at least four people are believed alive," a fire department spokesman said. "But the train is very badly crushed and it's hard to tell much more than that. We cannot deny that others may be in there."
NHK television said one of the four was unconscious.
Officials said they did not know the cause of the crash, which took place shortly after the morning rush hour. But passengers said they felt the train, which had been late leaving the previous station, had been moving faster than normal.
The fire department spokesman said 56 had died. Around 400 people were taken to hospital.
Five of the train's 7 cars derailed in the accident. The train was carrying about 580 passengers when it crashed into the building in Amagasaki, slightly west of Osaka.
Rescuers in hard hats clustered near the twisted remains of the front two cars, one of which had been smashed to less than half its normal width, using cutters and ladders to get inside.
Railway officials said that calculations had shown that a train could derail if it were travelling at nearly twice the speed limit at the site where the accident occurred.
Passenger Tatsuya Akashi, who had been on his way to work, told NHK it felt as if the train had speeded up as it went around a curve.
"I thought there were some strange swings, and then the train derailed. No one knew what happened and everyone kept screaming," he said.
It was the worst train accident in Japan since 1963 when about 160 people were killed in a multiple train collision at Yokohama, near Tokyo.