"According to preliminary figures, there are 54 dead and 1,249 injured," Red Cross official Niels Juel told AFP in Beijing.

"The North Korean Red Cross said the toll could increase."

The South Korean government confirmed that two trains carrying fuel collided in the station of the city of Ryongchon on Thursday, triggering a massive blast and heavy casualties.

Witnesses said ash and debris were carried over the Chinese border 20 kilometeres to the north. They said the densely-populated area around the station looked as if it had been bombed, and that high-rise buildings had been flattened.

"There was an explosion and there were many casualties," South Korean Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun said.

South Korea 's Yonhap news agency said government officials had confirmed some 3,000 casualties without giving a breakdown of dead or injured.

North Korea declared a state of emergency following the blast that occurred just hours after leader Kim Jong-Il passed through the railway station in his armoured private train on his return from China, Yonhap said.

Jeong said it was too early to estimate the extent of the damage and the toll of dead and wounded.

"It is too premature to talk of the number of casualties," he said. "It will take a considerable time to estimate the extent of the damage."

Jeong said that two trains carrying flammable fuel collided in Ryongchon city igniting a huge explosion.

"We understand that a collision occurred when the trains carrying fuel oil were changing tracks at the Ryongchon station," he said.

The secretive Stalinist government in Pyongyang has yet to formally admit to the disaster and cut international phone lines after the incident. But after nearly 24 hours of silence the authorities asked a Red Cross team to visit the city to assess the scale of the carnage.

"They are going to look at the extent of the disaster and they will confirm what the needs are," Red Cross representative for East Asia John Sparrow told AFP in Beijing.

China confirmed the blast had occurred and said two of its nationals were killed and 12 injured.

A huge pall of smoke was seen billowing into the sky in a satellite photograph taken of the site 18 hours after the explosion and shown on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website.

Digital Globe file image of Ryongchon station area

Yonhap news agency quoted South Korean officials as saying that some of the 3,000 casualties were being taken to hospitals in the Chinese border city of Dandong and other areas just across the border.

However, officials at the North Korean border and hospitals in the Chinese border city denied the report.

North Korea is on the point of economic collapse. Aid agencies say hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps even millions, have died from famine in recent years. Vital infrastructure is poorly maintained, and experts say the healthcare system would be totally incapable of handling a major disaster.

"We assume North Korea needs emergency goods, medicines and daily necessities," Minister Jeong said in Seoul.

Senior diplomats and aid groups based in North Korea held a meeting in Pyongyang as they scrambled to find out details about the explosion.

"We met with the aid agencies and we are all asking the government questions but we are not getting any answers," a senior diplomat told AFP.

Witnesses said the entire area of the blast "was turned into ruins comparable to the aftermath of a massive bombing," according to Yonhap news agency.

A Chinese source told South Korea's Kyonghang newspaper that high-rise buildings in the densely-populated area had been razed.

"Everything was flattened for about 100 meters (330 foot) from the blast," the witness was quoted as saying. "There was nothing left."

South Korean reports said that North Korea was carrying out an investigation of the blast. China's Xinhua news agency, citing Chinese diplomats in Pyongyang, said that a leak of ammonium nitrate, used in explosives and fertilizer, from one of the two trains, was to blame for the disaster.

South Korean officials said the blast appeared to be a tragic accident and there were no signs it was a terrorist attack.

South Korea was joined by the United States and Australia in offering humanitarian aid to North Korea while Goh Kun, South Korea's acting president, expressing deep condolences to the North Korean people.

If the death and injured toll is confirmed, it would rank as one of the world's worst train disasters.

earlier related report
North Korean Fuel Train Explodes
Seoul - Apr 23, 2004
About 3000 people were killed or injured after two trains laden with fuel collided and exploded today at a North Korean railway station, just hours after North Korea's Kim Jong-Il passed through on his return from China, reports said.

The blast was so powerful it destroyed the railway station at Ryongchon near the Chinese border at around 1pm.

North Korea declared a state of emergency around the site of the blast which resembled a war zone, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Chinese sources as saying, while North Korea's official media did not report the blast.

At least 3000 people were dead or injured, according to Seoul's YTN news channel. Yonhap, also quoting Chinese sources, said the number of casualties could reach into the thousands.

South Korean media said the explosion occurred when two cargo trains carrying fuel collided at Ryongchon, 50 kilometres south of the North Korean border with China.

One of the trains carried petrol and the other liquified petroleum gas, Yonhap news agency said, citing sources in China.

South Korean officials confirmed that a blast had occurred.

"It is true there was a large explosion in North Korea today," an official told AFP, requesting anonymity. "We are still trying to confirm other details."

A defence ministry official told Yonhap they had yet to confirm "the cause of the incident, the kind of explosion and how many died".

The entire area "was turned into ruins comparable to the aftermath of a massive bombing," Yonhap said, quoting witnesses.

North Korean authorities were investigating the cause of the accident, Yonhap said.

If the death and injured toll is confirmed, it would be one of the worst train disasters ever, outweighing a 1981 accident in India which killed more than 800 people.

The North Korean government, which often keeps its own citizens in the dark over events at home and abroad, immediately cut off international phone services to the devastated area in an effort to impose a news blackout, Yonhap said.

Pyongyang's arch enemy Washington said it was willing to provide emergency assistance but stressed it had no independent information on the blast.

"We are following the reports of a train accident in North Korea," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "We've seen some reports of very large numbers of casualties from that," he said.

"We have always been willing to help the people of North Korea with humanitarian needs, (but) we don't know enough about the situation yet to know whether there is any assistance that might be necessary."

Many of the injured were taken to hospitals across the border in the Chinese city of Dandong, Seoul's MBC television said.

Other reports said China had sealed off the border with North Korea at Dandong, on the rail line that leads to Ryongchon, a strategic coastal area.

Chinese traders and visitors are normally relatively free to enter and leave North Korea at the border post, passing into the North Korean town of Sinuiju.

One report said the gas that one of the trains was carrying was a donation from China to energy-starved North Korea, locked in an 18-month standoff with the United States over its nuclear weapons drive.

Only nine hours before the blast, North Korean supreme leader Kim passed through the area on his special train returning to Pyongyang from a three-day visit to Beijing. Media reports here said there were no grounds to suspect foul play or an attempt on the leader's life.

An unnamed government source told MBC television the incident appeared to be no more than an accident.

"I doesn't look like this has anything to do with terrorism," he said.

China said that during his stay in the country, Beijing had agreed to supply aid to the Stalinist state whose economy is close to collapse following years of natural disasters and poor economic management.

Citing security reasons, and his fear of flying, Kim prefers to travel by train when travelling abroad to China, and also in a 2001 visit to Moscow.

Kim, North Korea's hereditary dictator, presides over the world's most isolated regime.

Experts say that North Koreans are deprived access to the most basic information about what is happening inside and beyond their borders.

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