Rescue workers recovered about 300 bodies Sunday from the wreckage of a subway that caught fire in the capital, trapping hundreds of terrified passengers. Well over 200 others were injured.
Azerbaijan declared two days of mourning for the dead. Officials blamed the tragedy, the world's worst subway accident, on the system's "outdated Soviet" equipment.Unable to escape from the packed cars, most of the people who died were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning from burning toxic materials in the train carriages, officials said.
"As soon as the train entered the tunnel I saw a flash," said Tabil Guseinov, 45, a passenger. "Then the flames enveloped the train car, there was a sound of breaking glass, and the lights went out.
"People started breaking windows to get out. We were starting to suffocate," he said.
The fire broke out between two subway stations in central Baku on Saturday afternoon because of a malfunction of the train's electrical system, officials said.
Survivors described sparks flying from high-voltage cables just after the train left the busy Ulduz station.
Rescuers battled the blaze until early Sunday, then pulled the injured and the dead, wrapped in rugs and blankets, from the tunnel. Police and security forces sealed off the area, barring journalists.
Authorities initially said only two people had died in the fire, but the death toll climbed steadily overnight as more bodies were found.
Interior Minister Ramil Usubov told The Associated Press on Sunday morning that at least 289 people had died, including 28 children.
Morgue officials said they counted at least 303 bodies, and the independent Azerbaijani news agency Turan quoted medical officials as putting the death toll at 337.
Azerbaijan's health minister, Ali Insanov, said 269 people were injured. Of the injured, 62 remained hospitalized Sunday, most of them in serious condition.
"The main reason was carbon monoxide poisoning, which paralyzes the respiratory system and causes emphysema and instant death," Insanov said.
It was not known how many people were on the train, officials said.
In Moscow, where the subway carries 1 million people a day, officials attributed the high death toll to panic among the passengers and, possibly, mistakes by the train driver.
The high number of deaths may have been caused "by a fire in three to four cars and an ensuing panic, for there was no light, the car doors closed and fire was raging all around," Anatoly Reznik, a Moscow subway security officer, told the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Valentin Ageyev, of the Moscow metro's fire department, said the train operator probably should have driven the train slowly to the next station rather than stopping it in the tunnel.
"Stopping the train in the tunnel may pose a death threat to passengers, because flammable materials account for 90 percent of the (subway) car finish," he said.
Cars manufactured in the late 1960s, of the kind still used in Baku, were especially prone to fire, Ageyev said.
All local radio stations played funereal music as part of national mourning.
President Geidar Aliev set up a government commission to investigate. Its head, Deputy Prime Minister Abbas Abbasov, promptly blamed the accident on Baku's "outdated Soviet" subways, which needed urgent repairs, the Turan news agency reported.
Subway traffic resumed Sunday morning on most lines in the city of 1.7 million.
Last year, about 20 people were killed in two terrorist attacks on the Baku subway. Both cases are still under investigation.
Immediately after Saturday's accident, rumors began circulating around Baku that the fire was also a terrorist act. Authorities insisted there was no indication of terrorism in Saturday's fire.
Azerbaijan, an oil-rich Turkic nation on the western shore of the Caspian Sea, borders on Russia, Georgia, Iran and Armenia. It has been weakened by economic and political turmoil and by war with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.
With a cease-fire in the war now holding, Azerbaijan is hoping for an economic boost, especially after concluding a multibillion-dollar oil deal with a Western consortium.
Aliev, the country's former Communist boss who returned to power in 1993, has cracked down on opposition parties and independent media. His government has barred some of Azerbaijan's main opposition parties from taking part in Nov. 12 parliamentary elections.