Scores killed as Iran train crashes then derails 

At least 17 people have been killed after a passenger train derailed in eastern Iran today, the semi-official Fars news agency said, while 60 passengers were seriously injured, Reuters reports.

The train travelling to the city of Yazd collided with an excavator before going off the rails 50 kilometres from the city of Tabas, where it began its journey, a railway official told state news agency IRNA.

“Five ambulances are at the accident scene and another 12 are on their way,” the crisis management chief of the province of South Khorasan told the agency.

Some of the injured were airlifted to hospital by helicopter, state television footage showed.

The Tabas prosecutor visited the scene as a judicial investigation was launched into the cause of the accident, Iranian media reported.

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