ZIBO, China - Chinese authorities said Tuesday that a passenger train involved in the nation's worst rail accident for over a decade, killing at least 70 people, had been travelling far above its speed limit.
After the line to the seaside town of Qingdao -- the venue of the Olympics sailing competition -- was quickly reopened, the official Xinhua news agency cited an investigation panel saying "high speed" caused the accident.
The passenger train from Beijing that derailed and slammed into an oncoming train was travelling at 131 kilometres (81 miles) an hour, in excess of that section's 80-kilometre-an-hour limit, it said, citing the panel headed by the central government's work safety administration.
A local official at the scene of Monday's pre-dawn crash near Zibo city in eastern China's Shandong province also sought to blame the driver of the train from Beijing, believed to have been carrying more than 1,000 people.
"It's human error. The train was going way too fast," Zibo city spokesman Li Chenggang told AFP.
The train driver is believed to have survived but Li indicated his actions would be under extremely close scrutiny. "No one knows what is going to happen with the driver of the train," he said.
The latest official death toll from the accident released on Monday night was 70, with 416 injured, making it the worst train accident in China since 1997.
However, dozens of the injured were reported to be in critical condition, and an AFP journalist at the crash site witnessed what appeared to be another dead body being carried away in a bag on Tuesday morning.
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