Train services came to a halt again late Thursday in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region as hurricane-strength winds continued to buffet the region, according to the Urumqi Railway Bureau.

 

A train from Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, to the southern city of Aksu was canceled on Wednesday afternoon.

 

The train with more than a thousand passengers, most of them university students heading back to college, was cancelled at 5:00 p.m. as winds continued to gust at over 144 km per hour, said the bureau.

 

The violent winds forced another cancellation on Thursday.

 

The force 11 to 13 winds were expected to lessen from Thursday, said the local meteorological observatory.

 

Hurricane force winds derailed 11 carriages of a train in the early hours of Wednesday morning, killing three, injuring 34 and blocking the railway for nine hours.

 

The accident happened when most passengers were asleep. Violent winds cracked window panes soon after the train left Turpan, about 120 km from Urumqi. Some of the carriages were then blown clean off the tracks down an embankment, said a passenger named Li Zhi.

 

Li crawled out of the derailed train through a window in temperatures of minus 10 Celsius. "I scrambled out in my bare feet without a penny in my pocket," said Li who suffered injuries to the head and lower back.

 

The last man trapped in the train, an attendant named Han Jianwei, was freed at 10:00 a.m. after rescuers used a blow torch to extricate his leg from underneath the railway car, said witnesses.

 

Wednesday was the tenth day of the Chinese lunar new year and many of the passengers were returning home after visiting family members and friends over the holiday. The Urumqi Railway Bureau earlier predicted it would handle 1.4 million passengers during Spring Festival.

 

All the injured are in hospital, said the local bureau.

 

The 1,100 passengers who escaped injury have arrived in Aksu mainly by bus.

 

With winds continuing to gust violently, rescuers are unable to complete clearing up work.

 

"The wind is so strong you can't stand up. My face and hands were scratched by the sand and small stones. Sand filled my mouth whenever I took a breath," said a local rescuer named Zhang Xiaoli.

 

"This is a windy area but it's rare to see a train derailed by wind," Zhang said.

 

Wind, cold and snow hit Xinjiang two days ago, said the regional meteorological station.

 

The area, well known for all-year-round strong winds, abuts a wind farm.

 

In April last year the windows of a train traveling from Urumqi to Beijing were cracked by a sand storm and the train was delayed 32 hours near the site of Wednesday's accident.

 

Eleven train cars were derailed by strong winds in April 2001 in the same section. No one was killed in that accident.

 

"Trains are easier to overturn than cars because they are higher and narrower," said Wang Fengyu, a physics professor from Beijing Jiaotong University.

 

"In a sandstorm the wind blows out the windows on one side of the train. Then the winds swirl into the carriages and capsize them," said another professor surnamed Wu.

 

The rail line is a branch of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway.

 

In 2003, the Ministry of Railways and Urumqi Railway Bureau built a three-meter-tall wall along the main rail line to protect trains from strong winds. The project cost 1.3 billion yuan (US$168 million).

 

(Xinhua News Agency March 2, 2007)