3000 3000 KILLED AS FUEL TRAINS CRASH; WORST RAIL DISASTER.

Byline: By Mark Ellis 

AS many as 3000 people were feared killed or injured last night in what may be the world's worst rail disaster.

A state of emergency was thought to have been declared after two trains carrying oil and liquid petroleum crashed head-on and exploded in the North Korean town of Ryongchon.

News of the tragedy was believed to have been covered up by the country's secretive communist government.

Early reports from South Korea and China suggested they had cut international phone lines to stop the magnitude of the tragedy leaking out.

South Korean news agency Yonhap quoted one witness as saying: 'The area by Ryongchon station has turned into ruins as if it were bombarded.

'Debris from the explosion soared high into the sky and drifted to the Chinese border.'

The trains crashed at 1pm local time and turned into a huge fireball, engulfing a large area of the town around the station, 12 miles from the Chinese border.

The exact cause remained a mystery last night.

But it was revealed North Korean leader Kim Jong 11 had passed through the station nines hours earlier as he returned from China.

The 62-year-old leader, who rarely flies, was returning to his capital Pyongyang after meeting Chinese leaders to discuss his nuclear weapons.

However, South Korean government officials said they had heard the crash was an accident and not an act of terrorism.

Defectors from North Korea say the railways, like the rest of the nation's infrastructure, are rundown and accident prone.

Trains packed with passengers are sometimes stranded for hours until power supplies are restored.

Early reports said some of the injured were evacuated to hospitals in Dandong, China.

North Korea is one of the world's most isolated countries and rarely allows visits by outside journalists.

Events within its borders are difficult to verify and the state media is unlikely to confirm such an accident.

The latest disaster is similar to one in Iran in February.

Then, two runaway fuel trains derailed in Neyshabur, causing a wave of explosions that destroyed five villages and killed more than 200 people.

The biggest previous rail death toll 543 fatalities was in France in 1917 when troop trains derailed near the entrance of Mount Cenis tunnel in Modane.