Train derails, 31 killed

As darkness fell nearly nine hours after the accident, rescue workers toiling behind blue plastic sheeting were trying to retrieve several people believed to be alive in the wreckage embedded in the building’s first-floor car park.

About 300 people were taken to hospital, a police spokesman said. It was not known if the injured included anyone from the apartment building, six metres from the train tracks, he said. Five cars derailed in the accident, which took place shortly after the morning rush hour in a residential area near Osaka, 400 km west of Tokyo. The train was carrying about 580 passengers.

Rescuers clustered near the twisted remains of the front two cars, one of which had been smashed to less than half its normal width, using cutters and ropes to get inside.

‘‘The train over-ran a stop at the previous station and so it backtracked,’’ a visibly shaken man in his 20s, his face bloodied, said. ‘‘The train was moving so fast, we hit a turn and I didn’t think we’d make it,’’ he added. ‘‘Then the train derailed.’’

Soldiers from Japan’s Self-Defence Forces were despatched to the scene to help with rescue efforts. Operator West Japan Railway Co. (JR West) said the cause of the derailment was under investigation but it confirmed that the train had over-shot the station at its previous stop. ‘‘We do not know yet the cause of the accident,’’ West Japan Railway president Takeshi Kakiuchi said.

Officials said the train’s driver was a 23-year-old man with 11 months experience. The same driver had over-shot a station last June. Officials said the speed limit at the site of the accident was 70 km per hour. Calculations showed derailments were possible at a speed of 133 km per hour, they said, but they did not know how fast the train had been going.