Train blast that killed 14 in Italian seaside town 'was like something from disaster film'

Survivors of an explosion in an Italian seaside town described yesterday how burnt victims ran through blazing streets to escape the inferno. At least sixteeen people including three children were killed and thirty-four were injured after a freight train carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) was derailed in the Tuscan town of Viareggio before midnight on Monday. At least five people are still missing and 1,000 have been evacuated. Police said that five wagons at the back of the fourteen-wagon train, which was on its way to Pisa, left the tracks and crashed next to the station. The crash ruptured the tanks carrying the LPG and the fumes ignited. Witnesses described how residents, many in their night clothes or naked, fled blazing streets. “There were dead people, bodies in the street which had been thrown from their houses by the blast and so many people who were fleeing who were losing their skin because they were burnt,” Roberto Galli, a resident, said.

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Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, arrived in Viareggio to inspect the damage and console survivors. He was greeted with applause and whistles and shouts of “buffoon” — an apparent reference to the scandals in his private life.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6606638.ece