N korea train blast

[ralphwiggum 6]

my colleague just contacted me via email and told me that all buildings and structures within 500meter radius was totaled.

[theavonlady 1]

I can't say it's happy news but still:

Quote[/b] ]N.Korea Blast Kills 54, Injures 1,249, Red Cross Says

Fri Apr 23, 2004 04:32 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - A blast believed to have been caused by explosives on rail wagons has killed 54 people and injured 1,249 people in North Korea, a Red Cross spokesman said on Friday.

John Sparrow, a regional delegation spokesman for the IFRC in Beijing, said 1,850 households were leveled by the blast near the center of the town of Ryongchon, and another 6,350 homes were partly destroyed.

The number of casualties could climb as rescue crews combed through the rubble.

"That figure could increase, obviously," Sparrow said of the death toll after speaking to Red Cross officials at the scene of the accident.

The disaster was caused by rail cars laden with explosives, possibly for mining, he said.

[Albert Schweitzer 10]

A lot of the North Corean rail infrastructure still depends on steamengines. The hospitals dont have electricity 24 hours. Sometimes not even a single telephone exists in a city. This country is so backward that the medical infrastructure is zero to none. I dont want to know how many people are still lying under collapsed buildings, and in North Corea, there is no hope of help!

[Balschoiw 0]

Quote[/b] ]This country is so backward that the medical infrastructure is zero to none.

They don´t have even fuel for their ambulances.

Doesn´t matter much as they don´t have much working ambulances

[hellfish6 7]

[sarcasm]

But isn't North Korea a shining beacon of harmony and social justice? How can anything be bad there?

[/sarcasm]

[Akira 0]

Just a comment but there is some building evidence that the pic of the "fire" is faked. Well not faked but look here:

Possibly Real Pic

[Llauma 0]

Just a comment but there is some building evidence that the pic of the "fire" is faked. Well not faked but look here:

Possibly Real Pic

Haha.. someone has sold them a pic of a baghdad explosion claiming it's NK

[ralphwiggum 6]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/04/23/nkorea.train/index.html

Quote[/b] ] (CNN) -- The government in Pyongyang appealed to the United Nations Friday for help after Thursday's massive and deadly train blast in North Korea, and the United Nations said it is responding.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that a U.N. inter-agency mission will "mobilize immediate support and assistance to the people in the afflicted area."

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Health Organization will lead the U.N. mission to Ryongchon, site of the explosion.

The U.S. State Department on Friday said it hasn't received any requests for aid from North Korea, but didn't rule out possible U.S. assistance once needs are identified.

"We have been looking at the situation in North Korea," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday. "We have been in touch with other governments and international organizations about what they know about the explosion and the situation."

A spark from a live power cable touched off a deadly train explosion Thursday near North Korea's border with China, killing dozens of people and injuring hundreds more, Sweden's ambassador to North Korea said Friday, quoting North Korean officials.

In London, Britain's Foreign Office said its ambassador to North Korea, David Slinn, had been told by government officials that "several hundred" people were killed and thousands were injured.

Officially, the North Korean government has said fewer than 100 were killed and 1,000 to 1,200 were injured.

The blast Thursday afternoon destroyed between 1,800 and 2,000 homes, Swedish Ambassador Paul Beijer said. A dozen public buildings were also damaged, according to figures from a team of Red Cross workers dispatched to the site.

[ralphwiggum 6]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/04/24/nkorea.train/index.html

Quote[/b] ](CNN) -- At least 154 people died in a massive blast at a North Korean train station, 76 of them students, China's official Xinhua news agency has quoted an official as saying.

The one-sentence report cited a senior North Korean rescue official and didn't say how old the students were or give other details.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/04/24/nkorea.train/index.html

Quote[/b] ](CNN) -- A Red Cross worker who visited the site of a train explosion in North Korea has described the scene as one of devastation, with burned and "totally flattened" buildings.

<snip>

Matta said he did not see any dead or injured at the site and assumed that North Korean rescue workers had already taken victims to hospitals.

"It looks like they did a thorough search" before international aid workers arrived, The Associated Press reported him as saying.

[Akira 0]

Finally. A real pic comparison....and it was indeed massive:

Before And After

[red oct 2]

Quote[/b] ]Finally. A real pic comparison....and it was indeed massive:

Before And After

whoa! that had to be one hellava explosion to do all that. hard to believe the casualties were that low w/ that much destruction.

[Gadger 0]

Those two pictures put it in perspective, truely shocking

[Winters 1]

Quote[/b] ](CNN) -- A Red Cross worker who visited the site of a train explosion in North Korea has described the scene as one of devastation, with burned and "totally flattened" buildings.

<snip>

Matta said he did not see any dead or injured at the site and assumed that North Korean rescue workers had already taken victims to hospitals.

"It looks like they did a thorough search" before international aid workers arrived, The Associated Press reported him as saying.

No way only 150 people died.

[theavonlady 1]

There was a picture somwhere of the crater left by the explosion. It was a few stories deep.

Also pictures of railroad tracks, twisted and bent like pipe cleaners.

[bonko the sane 2]

the sad thing is that most of the injured (especially burnt victims) will die of lack of medication,medical treatment and food, the only hospital foreign reporters where alowed to visit didnt even had an aspirin, much less food , beds or blankets

[theavonlady 1]

There was a picture somwhere of the crater left by the explosion. It was a few stories deep.

[ozanzac 0]

I deeply underestimated the blast!

150 people.... No way.

Either that's a blatant lie, or there's an extraordinary amount of lucky(ish) people. Let's hope the survivors recieve the proper medical treatment.

[ralphwiggum 6]

.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3648794.stm

Quote[/b] ]A big explosion rocked a northern province of North Korea near the border with China last week, South Korea's Yonhap news agency is reporting.

The blast is said to have happened last Thursday, as North Korea marked the 56th anniversary of its founding.

Yonhap quoted a diplomatic source in Seoul as saying a large mushroom cloud was spotted in Yanggang province.

South Korea's Unification Minister has reportedly played down the possibility that it was a nuclear weapons test.

Diplomatic officials in Washington are also quoted as saying the nature of the blast is unclear.

In April, an explosion at a railway station in North Korea killed more than 150 people - but Pyongyang only admitted the incident three days later.

The diplomatic source in Seoul said the mushroom cloud, with a radius of 3.5-4 kms (2.2-2.5 miles), was spotted in Yanggang province's Kimhyungjik county.

The blast could be seen from a satellite, an unnamed official in Beijing was quoted by Yonhap as saying.

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young - Seoul's top negotiator with North Korea - said South Korea was trying to get confirmation of the explosion and its effects.

"We have received an unsubstantiated report on traces of an explosion in North Korea," he told reporters.

[hellfish6 7]

Oh boy... I thought NORAD could detect a nuclear explosion almost instantaneously.

[Billabong81 0]

Whoa....do they have any idea what the explosion was?

[quicksand 0]

Reports May Indicate N.Korea Nuclear Test-NY Times

Quote[/b] ]NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration has received recent intelligence reports that some experts believe could indicate North Korea is preparing to conduct its first nuclear weapons test explosion, The New York Times reported in Sunday editions.

Citing senior officials with access to the intelligence, the newspaper said the reports, sent to President Bush and his top advisers, describe a confusing series of actions by North Korea. A senior scientist who assesses nuclear intelligence said the evidence was not conclusive, but potentially worrisome.

The Times said U.S. intelligence agencies appeared divided about the significance of North Korea's recent actions, although they were viewed as serious enough to warrant a warning to the White House.

Such a test, if successful, would put an end to the debate over whether North Korea has a rudimentary nuclear arsenal. Some analysts fear a test could change the balance of power in Asia, and perhaps spawn a new nuclear arms race there, the Times said.

Senior officials who spoke to the Times on Friday and Saturday were reluctant to provide details of the new activities, but said some of the information appeared to have come from satellite intelligence. One official called the intelligence "a series of indicators of increased activity that we believe would be associated with a test," saying that the "likelihood" of a North Korean test had risen significantly in the past four weeks.

According to the Times, that changed assessment led to the decision to update Bush.

The activities included the movement of materials around several suspected test sites, including one near a location where intelligence agencies reported last year that conventional explosives were being tested that could compress a plutonium core and set off a nuclear explosion, the Times said. But it added that officials have not seen the classic indicators of preparations at a test site, in which cables are laid to measure an explosion in a deep test pit.

Officials said if North Korea proceeded with a test, it would probably be with a plutonium bomb, perhaps one fabricated from the 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods the North has boasted in the past few months have been reprocessed into bomb fuel, the newspaper reported.

One senior intelligence official noted that preparations the North knew could be detected by the United States might be a scare or a negotiating tactic by North Korea, while other officials speculated a test could be intended to influence the U.S. presidential election in November.

South Korea and the United States, along with China, Russia and Japan, are trying to restart stalled six-party discussions with North Korea to resolve the nuclear security crisis gripping the divided peninsula and the region.

The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. diplomats said Pyongyang had admitted pursuing a covert uranium enrichment program, in addition to a plutonium program that was suspended as part of a 1994 accord.

North Korea has since denied the existence of the uranium program but has unfrozen its plutonium program. U.S. officials say it may have enough nuclear material for eight bombs.

Could the two be related?-Baring in mind the importance of this anniversary a show off could lead to a huge boost in Kim Jo Young bid.

[Doc. Zaius 0]

Quote[/b] ]SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- A large cloud that appeared over North Korea in satellite images several days ago was not the result of a nuclear explosion, according to a U.S. official.

North Korea cloud 'not nuke blast'

At any rate, something happened. According to this Alaskan seismograph, at least.

[blackdog~ 0]

That is so weird. How many miles away is AK from NK? :S

[ralphwiggum 6]

a few thousand miles i think

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/09/12/nkorea.blast/index.html

Quote[/b] ]SEOUL, South Korea (CNN) -- A large cloud that appeared over North Korea in satellite images several days ago was not the result of a nuclear explosion, according to a U.S. official.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency is reporting a huge explosion shook North Korea's northernmost province on Thursday producing a mushroom cloud over 4 kilometers (two miles) wide.

The blast coincided with the anniversary of North Korea's founding on Sepember 9 when various military activities are staged.

The U.S. official said the cloud could be the result of a forest fire.

South Korea's Unification Minister Chung Dong-yong said the government was aware of the reports and is checking them.

"I have no information about the size of the damage of the explosion," he said on Sunday, according to Yonhap.

Chung also said he believed there was no correlation between the explosion and reports of North Korea preparing for a possible nuclear test.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that U.S. President George W. Bush and his top advisers recently received intelligence reports that could indicate North Korea is preparing its first nuclear test, citing senior officials with access to the intelligence.

John Irvine, a reporter for Britain's ITN TV who is in Pyongyang, said there has been no official response from the North Korean government, although there is pressure to provide an explanation.

"I'm touring outside Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, right now with the British Junior Foreign Minister Bill Rammell, who has just told me that he is demanding a response from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs here in North Korea," Irvine reported Sunday.

"[Rammell] does have a meeting with a senior foreign minister here tomorrow and Mr. Fammell anticipates some answers at least by then."

Yonhap reported the explosion happened in Yanggang province along the Chinese border, the site of Yongjori Missile Base -- a large facility with an underground missile firing range.

According to data gathered by Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), Yongjori is a suspected site for North Korea's uranium enrichment program.

According to its Web site, NTI is a private charity -- funded by CNN founder Ted Turner -- dedicated to lessen the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical and biological -- around the globe.

[Milkman 1]

Forest fire my ass. Never seen wood make a mushroom cloud 2 miles wide and blast the seimographs from over 1,000 miles away...