8A
Wednesdav. October 11. 1995
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FBI delving into train wreck
The Associated Press
HYDER, Ariz. — Sabotaged tracks and a note from "Sons of Gestapo" brought a swarm of federal agents yesterday to an isolated patch of desert where a train derailed off a 30-foot high bridge, killing one person and injuring at least 78.
FBI agents, special evidence teams and Justice Department investigators joined safety agencies at the scene within hours of Monday's wreck, which left four cars from Amtrak's Sunset Limited lying in a dry stream bed 55 miles southwest of Phoenix.
Construction crews yesterday worked on upgrading a road to the crash site so cranes could be brought in to hoist away the cars. The site is inaccessible to most vehicles, and the rescue of 248 passengers and 20 crew was carried out
almost entirely by helicopter.
Five bulldozers and four cranes stood by at a staging area six miles from the crash site. Mike Martino, the lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said it wasn't clear when the FBI would allow the cars to be moved.
"Once everyone is satisfied with the information they have, we'll start clearing away the wreckage," Martino said.
Investigators also were interviewing crew members and looking into their background and training, though they weren't being held responsible for the accident. he said.
Saboteurs removed a 3-foot, 18-pound steel bar that holds sections of rail together and bridged the gap with a wire to disable an electronic system designed to warn train crews of breaks in the track. Amtrak President Thomas M. Downs said.
Twenty-nine of the spikes that hold the rail to the wooden crosspers on a 19-foot section of track had been removed, according to a source familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"Someone obviously intended to drop the train off the trestle into the ravine." Downs said.
The sabotage would have taken about 10 minutes for someone with a basic knowledge of railways, he said.
The White House today stressed that it was too early to be sure terrorism was involved, but President Clinton expressed outrage.
"We will do everything we can within the federal government to catch whoever is responsible," Clinton said. "I am determined that we will make sure in the United States that we will have the tools, the means we need to keep the American people safe."
Sabotaged track
SOURCE: Wire reports, CNN
Knight-Ridder Tribune
Israel begins accord by freeing prisoners
The Associated Press
NABLUS, West Bank — Israel released about 300 Palestinian prisoners and handed a military government office to the PLO yesterday in an intermittent start to the West Bank autonomy agreement.
The releases were marred by delays, confusion and PLO accusations over Israel's refusal to pardon four Palestinian women prisoners despite a clause in the accord that says all female detainees are to be freed.
By late afternoon, some 300 prisoners had been freed, out of some 1,000 slated for release yesterday, radio reports said.
A senior Palestinian official had said earlier yesterday that none of the 500 security prisoners eligible for release yesterday would leave jail, in protest over the continued detention of the women.
"We are starting a new stage. Our war with the Jews has ended," said Mohammed Jerar, who was just a few days short of completing a seven-year sentence for stabbing a suspected Palestinian informer.
But 200 of the prisoners who walked out of prisons in Nablus and other towns had been held for security offenses.
"We are starting a new stage. Our war with the Jews has ended."
Mohammed Jorar Palestinian prisoner
Sami Zahran, who served three years of a seven-year term for weapons possession, said that he would not honor the non-violence oplege he signed.
"The occupation is still here and we have to continue resistance until the establishment of a Palestinian state," he said.
Ahmed Tibi, adviser to PLO leader Yasir Arafat, asked Israel's Supreme Court yesterday to order Israel's government to free the
four Palestinian women, saying their continued detention violated the autonomy accord.
The handover of the military government office in the village of Salfit marked the start of Israel's pullback in the West Bank. The ceremony offered the first real sign to Palestinians that 28 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank were ending.
"Today Sailit, tomorrow Jerusalem," proclaimed a jubilant banner hoisted in the village as Palestinians watched the departure of army trucks carrying equipment.
The mood was a mix of defiance and joy. Palestinian teen-agers chanted "PLO, Israel No," an old battle cry against occupation, while others flashed V-signs and waved Palestinian flags.
The Israeli troop withdrawal is to begin in Jenin by Nov. 19 and proceed in five other towns by the end of the year.
In Bethlehem, the West Bank town where, according to the Bible, Jesus was born, troops are to pull out before Christmas and the Palestinians will organize festivities there for the first time, a senior Israeli official said yesterday.
Earthquake death toll rises; searchers dig for victims
Rescue efforts slowed by power loss, severed phone lines
MANZANILLO, Mexico — The death toll increased to at least 54 people yesterday as rescue workers grappled with the destruction left by a 7.6-magnitude earthquake that toppled houses and hotels along Mexico's Pacific coast.
The Associated Press
The quake, which struck Monday morning, also injured 90 people as it cracked bridges, split highways and cut power and phone services.
Defense Minister Gen. Enrique Cervantes Aguirre, overseeing aid efforts to this port town, told reporters yesterday that 44 people died in Colima state alone.
In the neighboring state of Jalisco, officials said 10 people had died. They revised their death toll down from 45 on Monday because some victims had been counted more than once.
The two states contain some of Mexico's most popular beach resorts.
In Manzanillo, a resort 330 miles west of Mexico City, the seven-story Costa Real Hotel was reduced to rubble. Rescuers have pulled 19 bodies and 10 injured people from the ruins.
Several blocks away, Bernadette McCafferty said she had run screaming through the hall in her pajamas when the Radisson Hotel had begun to sway.
"It felt like being in a boat with high waves," said the tourist from Oakville, Ontario. "I felt like I was done. Dead."
Vice Adm. Ambrosio Ariza Lopez, a director of search operations for the armed forces, said he had expected crews to find more bodies at the Costa Real Hotel.
"We really don't know exactly how many people died in the hotel," Ariza Lopez said, as workers discovered the fifteenth body.
Hotel manager Alfonso Ramirez Ochoa said 33 of the hotel's 57 guests were missing.
Rescue workers wearing blue-and-white surgical masks used pickaxes to sift through jumbled masses of clothing, mattresses, torn sofas and building debris. Cots prepared with emergency medical supplies lay nearby in the event survivors were
found.
"I haven't rested since yesterday," said Pedro Sandoval, a police officer who joined a brigade of police and soldiers carrying out cement chunks by hand.
Red Cross workers and sailors built a temporary morgue on the lawn next to the hotel pool, laying sheet-covered covers side by side.
Just outside Manzanillo, a building housing the state judicial police collapsed, killing a police commander and seven other people, said state spokesman Mario Cardenas.
"The injured are everywhere," said Livas de la Garza, a textile shop owner in Manzanillo.
There was no way to immediately confirm the overall death toll. Independent estimates put the death toll at more than 10,000.
Manzanillo was the setting for the movie "10" with Bo Derek and is best known for its towering white hotels, breathtaking views of rocky cliffs and a broad bay.
The area shook violently after the quake, which was centered three miles offshore. It was felt as far away as Dallas and Oklahoma City.
Telephone service and power were cut to many areas, and authorities canceled flights to Manzanillo.
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