http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35709-2004Apr23.htmlDANDONG, China, April 23 -- Cars and trucks sped madly by, she recalled, packed with bleeding, moaning passengers on their way to hospitals, clinics, relatives' homes -- anywhere but the nearby North Korean railway station where a tremendous blast had just sent a "sea of fire" rolling across an entire neighborhood.
"People were in every posture," the woman related shortly after arriving Friday afternoon in Dandong, on the Chinese bank of the Yalu River borderline. "Some were lying down. Some were standing. Some were crying and screaming. They all looked scared."
The blast, which occurred midday Thursday at Ryongchon about 12 miles east of here, carved a large circle of death and destruction in the city of 130,000, according to official and humanitarian sources. John Sparrow, a regional spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said it killed at least 54 people, injured 1,249, demolished 1,850 buildings and damaged about 6,000 more. Anne O'Mahony, regional director of the aid group Concern, told reporters by telephone from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, that the government informed her organization about 150 people had been killed and more than 1,000 injured.
The traveler interviewed here said she was told by a friend, who visited the blast site Thursday afternoon to look for missing family members, that many buildings, including a school that was in session, were smashed by the concussion or burned by the flames within a radius of more than a mile. She said she heard the explosion -- "one big sound, like a thunderclap" -- as she was eating lunch around noon in a restaurant about six miles from the Ryongchon railway station where the disaster occurred.
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