At least 50 killed in Congo train crash: sources

KINSHASA More than 50 people were killed in a train crash in Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga province, a provincial minister said on Wednesday.

The accident on Tuesday involved a goods train that was also carrying people near Likasi, a mining town between Lubumbashi and Kolwezi in the copper and cobalt-rich southeast.

Dikanga Kazadi, Katanga's interior minister, gave a provisional toll of 56 dead and 69 injured but said the toll was expected to rise and a team had been sent to investigate the incident.

A witness said he counted 37 bodies at the scene.

"There were two train engines and two carriages overturned," he told Reuters, asking not to be named.

Congo's infrastructure is in tatters after decades of neglect and conflict so people struggle to travel around the vast nation, which is roughly the size of Western Europe.

More than 100 people were killed in a 2007 accident involving people travelling onboard a goods train in the province of Kasai Occidential.

(Reporting by Pete Jones and Bienvenu Bakumanya; Writing by David Lewis, Editing by Daniel Flynn and Angus MacSwan)