Aid trucks cross border to N Korean rail blast site

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• published: 21 Jul 2015
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ALL LIVEWIRE MATERIAL 1. Trucks being loaded with aid from China by military personnel 2. Banner being placed on side of truck 3. Various of loading and securing truck 4. Convoy driving 5. Convoy crossing Sino-Korean Friendship bridge 6. Various of convoy crossing Sino-Korean Friendship bridge 7. Boat on water 8. More of convoy crossing bridge STORYLINE: Food, tents and other emergency aid from China has arrived in North Korea after a devastating train explosion which killed more than 160 people - nearly half of them children in a school torn apart by the blast - and left thousands homeless. Aid workers who were the first outsiders to reach the disaster site in the secretive communist country this weekend recounted seeing huge craters, twisted rail tracks and scorched buildings following Thursday''s massive explosion in Ryongchon, near the Chinese border. But the 1,300 people that North Korean officials said were injured in the catastrophe, along with the bodies of the dead, had been evacuated before the aid workers arrived in the nearby city of Sinuiju. By Sunday, the Red Cross said the official death toll had risen to 161 up from the 154 reported earlier. John Sparrow, a Red Cross spokesman in Beijing, confirmed the new death toll but did not say whether it reflected new deaths or confirmed casualties. He said earlier that 76 of the dead were children from a school that had been destroyed in the explosion. North Korea blamed the disaster on human error, saying a train cargo of oil and chemicals ignited when workers knocked the wagons against power lines. The statement was unusually frank for North Korea, which is believed to have covered up past disasters and tightly controls the flow of information to its people and the outside world. Thousands of Ryongchon residents were left homeless by the disaster. North Korean state television announced on Sunday that Chinese supplies were on the way to Ryongchon, indicating that the totalitarian government had notified its population of the catastrophe. China said later on Sunday that the initial batch of aid had arrived, with the official Chinese news agency Xinhua saying that 2,000 carpets, 300 tents, food items and other relief materials had been shipped to Sinuiju. South Korea''s Red Cross planned to send instant noodles, bottles of mineral water, blankets and clothing once transport was organised. Lee Yoon-goo, the Red Cross chief in Seoul, proposed coordinating relief efforts with North Korea''s Red Cross in a telephone message via Red Cross liaison officers at the truce village of Panmunjom in the buffer zone where the Koreas have faced off since their war in the early 1950s. In Canberra, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said his country would help North Korea if it asked for assistance. Australia maintains diplomatic links with North Korea, but Downer said Australian diplomats had not been among a group of foreign aid workers and envoys who visited the site of the explosion this weekend. Sparrow said the explosion had "obliterated" the railroad station and the immediate surroundings. UN officials estimate that 40 per cent of the town of Ryongchon was damaged, including a three-storey primary school about 300 metres (yards) from the train station, where the roof was ripped away and the top floor collapsed. The aid workers'' visit followed a rare invitation from the North''s communist government, which relaxed its normally intense secrecy as it pleaded for international help. On Saturday, North Korea''s state news agency said the explosion was touched off by "electrical contact caused by carelessness during the a downed power line. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/eab1c47ac3db5b6a565e66db6ef624c3 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork