A passenger train traveling through eastern Iran struck an excavator and derailed nearly half its cars before dawn Wednesday (June 8), killing at least 21 people and injuring another 47, reported Nasser Karimi of Associated Press (AP) from Iranian capital Tehran.
Officials informed the newsmen that the train derailment near the desert city of Tabas was the latest disaster to strike the Islamic Republic in recent weeks as Tehran struggles under U.S. sanctions and any return to its nuclear deal with world powers remains in doubt.
The train operated by the state-run Islamic Republic Railway carried some 350 people as it traveled from Tabas, some 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Tehran, to the city of Yazd. The route had began as an overnight train out of Iran’s holy city of Mashhad.
Based on images after the crash, it appeared the train’s locomotive passed the excavator and the later cars somehow hit the digger and caused the derailment, though authorities did not immediately explain how the disaster happened in the rural scrubland near a railway bridge.