A local train on a milk-run from Mazatlan to the California border plunged off a bridge into a river in northwestern Mexico, killing at least 99 people and injuring 107, officials said.
Jose Pena Galanza of the Pacific Railway told the government news agency Notimex that bodies had been pried from the wreckage of an engine and two passenger cars that fell early Wednesday into the San Rafael River, 59 miles southeast of Los Mochis. The site is 730 miles from Mexico City.Torrential rains over the last week were blamed for the crash.
"The cause was quite clear. The heavy rains loosened the rail bed, and the rails just gave way," said Roberto Martinez Maestre, a spokesman for the state government based in Mexico City.
But it was not immediately clear if the bridge was swept away or weakened by floods before the train crossed or was knocked to bits when the train jumped the rails.
The search for bodies continued into the night, with rescue workers working knee-deep in mud and water along the river saying they expected the death toll to surpass 99.
Derailed passenger cars were jumbled along the tracks like straws. Helicopters landed rescue workers nearby and casualties were taken out on railroad handcars.
Rail and rescue officials could provide no immediate breakdown on the nationalities of the victims. Eleven bodies identified Wednesday night were all Mexican, and one official said the train was patronized almost entirely by poor Mexicans.
The train, popularly known as "The Burro" because it stops at almost every station, was on its way from the coastal resort of Mazatlan to Mexicali, across the border from Calexico, Calif.
News photographers who flew over the scene said they could see passenger cars lying jumbled, some of them on their side, in the river at the bottom of a deep ravine.
In Mexico City, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari expressed his condolences to relatives and said in a statement he had ordered National Railways - which includes the Pacific route - to pay compensation and burial costs.
Most people on the train were apparently asleep when the accident occurred at about 4 a.m.
The majority of victims drowned, said Javier Lopez, the Red Cross duty officer in Los Mochis. "They fell into the water and died of asphyxiation."
Abel Roldan, a rescue worker in the village of Bamoa, 11 miles from the accident site, said heavy rains finally stopped late Wednesday afternoon, "and this helped a lot."
Sinaloa state Gov. Francisco Labastida Ochoa rushed to the scene Wednesday, then went to Guamuchil for the night. The bodies and the injured were being brought to Guamuchil and nearby Guasave.
Lt. Gabriela Herrera, a duty officer with the Guasave police, said about 20 bodies were in the town's three funeral parlors and the rest at Guamuchil and Los Mochis, 410 miles south of Nogales, Ariz.
Janet Gaxiole Sandoval, a secretary at a social security clinic in Guasave, said at least 30 of the injured were in serious condition.
Accidents happen every couple of months on the rundown Mexican railway system, but this was by far the most serious train accident this year in Mexico.
At least 34 passengers were killed injured when an express train derailed in July 1982 near Tepic, capital of Nayarit state south of Sinaloa.