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JAKARTA:
The death toll from a train collision near the Indonesian capital Jakarta has risen to 15 with another 88 injured, a senior minister said on Tuesday, as emergency teams completed work to rescue passengers trapped in the wreckage.
The collision between a commuter train and a long-distance train happened late on Monday in Bekasi, just outside Jakarta, with a carriage reserved for women bearing the brunt of the crash.
Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono, Indonesia’s senior minister for infrastructure, told reporters the death toll had risen to 15.
Mohammad Syafii, the head of Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, said all the victims were women and most of them had been pinned inside by crushed metal. It had been a delicate process to extricate them from the mangled carriages, he added, but the evacuation had been completed.
“We needed to involve personnel with certain skills to perform a measured extrication,” he said, adding that rescuers were continuing to comb through the wreckage and would take action if they foundany body parts.
