Trains Collide in Indonesia, Leaving 2 Dead and 2 Trapped

Nearly 500 passengers were evacuated on Friday morning after a train collision near the Indonesian city of Bandung killed two crew members, left two passengers trapped and injured more than two dozen others, officials said.

The two trains collided just after dawn in Rancaekek District, east of the city on the island of Java. Footage from the scene showed mangled train carriages, including some that had gone off the rails and into an adjacent rice field. The cause of the accident was not immediately clear.

One train was a local commuter line, and the other was a long-distance passenger route heading west to Bandung from the city of Surabaya when the crash occurred. Bandung is around 100 miles by road southeast of Jakarta, the capital.

The two people who died were train operators for the Bandung commuter line, according to a statement by Muhadjir Effendy, the coordinating minister for Human Development and Cultural Affairs of Indonesia.

Bey Machmudin, the acting governor of West Java, told reporters that all of the passengers — an estimated 191 on the commuter train and 287 on the long-distance one — had been evacuated. But Mr. Muhadjir said in his statement that emergency workers were still trying to rescue two people on the second train who remained stuck there late Friday morning. He did not provide any details on their condition.

Railway safety is a major concern in Indonesia, although the number of major train accidents there has been falling in recent years, according to a 2021 study by Hardianto Iridiastadi, a Bandung-based expert on transportation safety.

There were 35 train accidents nationwide between 2010 and 2016, and they were linked to 55 deaths and injuries to more than 240 passengers, the study said. More