3 dead, 63 hurt in central China train collision

Two passenger trains collided Monday, derailing cars, crushing nearby homes and killing three people, Chinese state media and an official said. The pre-dawn crash, which injured 63, occurred in Hunan province when a train going from the provincial capital Changsha to the southern city of Shenzhen collided with another Shenzhen-bound train, state television said.

The China Central Television newscast showed a tangle of red, white and blue train cars on their sides at the station in Chenzhou, where the collision occurred at 2:34 a.m. (1834 GMT Sunday). Seats were ripped from the floor of the train cars, and the ground around the accident was littered with plastic bottles and scraps of paper.