200 killed in runaway train blast; Villagers buried under rubble.

Byline: Liam Christopher

A MASSIVE explosion aboard runaway train wag ons hauling fuel and industrial chemicals killed more than 200 people in north-eastern Iran yesterday The dead inc luded senior local officials, fire fighters and rescue workers who were fighting blazes that began when the cars were derailed.

The explosion outside Neyshabur, the historical home of Omar Khayyam 400 miles east of the capital,Tehran, was so powerful that residents thought it was an earthquake.

Iranian seismologists recorded a 3.6-magnitude tremor at the exact time of the blast, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

Neyshabur city officials -inc luding the local governor, mayor and fire chief -were among the dead, along with 182 fire and rescue workers. At least 400 people were reported injur ed, most of them when their mud homes near the train tracks collapsed under the explosion 's force.

Mehran Vakili,Neyshabur's medical examiner, said 180 bodies had been recovered last night.

It was not immediately clear what caused the 51 wag ons to roll out of Abu Muslim station, outside Neyshabur in the early hours.

The 48 wag ons overturned on reaching Khayyam, the next stop on from Abu Muslim, starting ablaze.

IRNA said 17 wag ons were loaded with sulphur, six with petrol, seven with fertilisers and 10 carried cotton.

MohammadMaqdouri,head of the local emergency operations headquarters, said the wag ons exploded after most of the fire had been put out.

Villagers living near the tracks were trapped beneath mud homes that collapsed from the force of the explosion.

``I was sure it was an earthquake, and my first thought was to rush to the school and save my children,'' said 41 year -old Zahra Rezaie, who was cooking lunch for her family when she heard the explosion and felt the ground shake.

After finding her children safe at the school,Rezaie went to alocalhospital.

``That's when I saw them bringing in many injur ed people wearing unif orms that fire fighters or rescue workers wear,'' she said.

``They told me there had been an explosion.''.

Local ne wspaper editor SaeedKaviani said dozens of people remained buried under the rubble of their homes.

Blood supplies were rushed to the area and Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guards closed the immediate area fearing more explosions.

Authorities also appealed for blood donors to come forward.

Governor Mojtaba Farahmand-Nekou, the city's top politicalauthority, the head of the Neyshabur fire department and the city's mayor all died,IRNA reported.

The head of the city's energy department was also killed and the director-general of the provincial railways was missing.

CAPTION(S):

INFERNO: The train bur ns after the massive explosion