MOSCOW, May 20 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian Health Ministry has updated the casualty figures for a train crash on Tuesday near Moscow to six dead and 29 injured, up from five dead and 25 injured, according to Moscow Region Deputy Governor Dmitry Pestov.
“Another person has just passed away at a hospital,” Pestov said Tuesday. “We are looking for victims’ relatives to give them our assistance,” the official added.
Pestov’s press office said there had been 43 people in the derailed carriage. Earlier reports put the number of the wounded at up to 45 people, with the Moscow region’s health chief Nina Suslonova citing 30 injured.
“There are 17 emergency teams working at the scene of the accident, including six on-call paramedic brigades from the city of Naro-Fominsk, five on-call paramedic teams from Moscow, three teams from the local center of disaster medicine, four teams from the All-Russia Center of Disaster Medicine Zashchita with the Russian Health Ministry and one aerial medical team,” the Russian health authority said in a statement.
The Health Ministry put out an announcement on its webpage saying its chief Veronika Skvortsova was keeping tabs on the situation.
A source at the situation room said earlier on Tuesday a dozen of people had been admitted to clinics around the capital, with a further 15 taken to Moscow hospitals.
Another two of the injured are to be flown by helicopter to the Sklifosovsky emergency care institute in Moscow, said Sergei Goncharov, Director at a national center for disaster medicine, Zashchita (Protection).
Deputy Emergency Minister Vladimir Stepanov earlier ordered lists of the wounded to be compiled in order to inform their families of their whereabouts.
Two trains collided in the Moscow region earlier on Tuesday. The accident happened at the railroad line between Naro-Fominsk and Bekasovo, when a freight train derailed and collided into a long-distance passenger train going from Moscow to Chisinau.
According to the preliminary information from the Moscow Transport Department, the collision was caused by a broken rail.
