Relief from China arrives in N Korea

Food, tents and other emergency aid from China arrived today in North Korea even as the death toll in the devastating train explosion rose to 161.

Foreign aid workers recounted seeing huge craters, twisted rail tracks, rubble and scorched buildings following Thursday’s explosion in Ryongchon, near the Chinese border. But all of the 1,300 people that North Korean officials said were injured in the catastrophe, along with the bodies of 161, had already been evacuated before aid workers arrived. The aid workers said 76 of the dead were children in a school that had been destroyed. North Korea blamed the disaster on human error, saying a train cargo of oil and chemicals ignited when workers knocked the wagons against power lines.

North Korean state television announced on Sunday that Chinese supplies were headed for Ryongchon, indicating the totalitarian government had notified its population of the catastrophe. Meanwhile, North Korea’s Army today threatened to abandon a crucial 50-year-old security accord that ended the Korean War, accusing the US of preparing to attack the Communist country.

The threat came after South Korea said 12 days ago that the US agreed to withdraw a large portion of its troops guarding the truce village of Panmunjom in the four-km-wide buffer zone by October.

—PTI