China yesterday sacked three senior railway officials after a collision between two high-speed trains killed at least 43 people and raised new questions about the safety of the fast-growing rail network.A bullet train on Saturday night hit another express which lost power following a lightning strike, state media said, in the country’s deadliest rail disaster since 2008.The power failure knocked out an electronic safety system designed to alert trains about stalled locomotives on the line.As rescue teams and firefighters with excavators searched for survivors, state television said two children had been pulled alive from the wreckage.It was not known how many people were on the trains, which collided on a bridge near the city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, some 1,380km south of Beijing.“The task for us now is to clear the debris and also to check for survivors in those areas that we have not gone to,” said 35-year-old rescue worker Wang Jun.“Also, we are trying to get the railway line to be operational again.”Authorities moved quickly to assuage public anger by sacking the head of the Shanghai railway bureau, his deputy and the bureau’s Communist Party chief, the railways ministry said in a statement on its website (
www.china-mor.gov.cn). The three will “also be subject to investigation,” the statement added.Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang, visiting the scene, “pledged that the investigators will find out the cause of the accident and those responsible will be seriously punished according to the law”, the official Xinhua news agency reported.Rescuers found more bodies yesterday afternoon, bringing the death toll to 43. Reuters