The Lede Blog: At least 49 dead, 550 injured in train crash in Once Station in Buenos Aires

Video broadcast by C5N, an Argentine news channel, of the moment a train hit a barrier in a station in Buenos Aires on Wednesday.

Updated | 2:09 p.m. A 7-year-old boy was among the first of the 49 people confirmed killed in a train crash in Buenos Aires that also left at least 550 people injured, according to local media reports, including The Buenos Aires Herald.

A packed train derailed at the Once Station, one of the city’s busy central train stations, and crashed at the end of the track about 8:30 a.m., trapping hundreds of commuters.

“There are people still trapped, people alive, and there may have been fatalities,” Argentina’s transport secretary, Juan Pablo Schiavi, told reporters before rescue workers, began removing the dead from the wreckage of twisted metal and shattered glass. According to Mr. Schiavi, the train was traveling at too high a speed when it approached the station, hitting the barrier at the end of the platform, crumpling the front engine and collapsing commuter rail cars behind it. Most of those killed were in the first two cars.

Video posted online by C5N, an Argentine news channel, showed security camera footage of the moment the train hit the barrier. The Argentine newspaper La Nacion’s report on the crash included two video clips shot from the platform shortly after the accident that show the damage to the train and passengers leaving the scene.

One of the passengers told reporters, according to local media reports: “I had people piled on top of me, none of us could move.”

To help find missing friends and family members, people turned to Twitter and other social tools asking for help, including this post seeking information about Lucas Menghini Rey and Tatiana Pontiroli.

Todo Padua busca a Lucas Menghini Rey y Tatiana Pontiroli. Que aparezcan por favor.

— Lucía. (@lululilucia) February 22, 2012

Several witnesses appear to have recorded images of the scene in the immediate aftermath of the crash. One injured man even showed a television crew video he shot on his phone, as he waited for treatment.

This is the second deadly train crash in Argentina in recent months. In September, a train flew through the air after hitting a bus and smashed into another train, killing at least 11 people and injuring 250. A security camera at the train station captured video of that accident as well.

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In Mexico, Prison Riot Kills at Least 44 People

The authorities in Mexico’s Nuevo León State said a confrontation between inmates in two cellblocks broke out around 2 a.m. Sunday and lasted a few hours before the state and federal police could bring the prison, in Apodaca, under control.

Jorge Domene, a spokesman for the state government, said it appeared that members of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel, two of Mexico’s most powerful criminal groups, started the fight as part of a power struggle, using sharp objects, stones and clubs. He said firearms were not used.

The riot was the deadliest in a recent series of prison riots, including those in which 31 people died last month in Tamaulipas State and 20 were killed there in October. In Durango State, 23 people were killed in 2010.

Deadly rioting is commonplace in Mexican and Central American prisons as a drug war rages among criminal groups and government forces, filling prisons and jails well beyond their capacity. Local news reports said that the prison in Apodaca held 3,000 inmates but was built for 1,500.

Harsh overcrowding played a role in the fire last week that killed 359 people at a prison in central Honduras; it was one of the deadliest prison fires anywhere in decades. Officials were investigating the cause, including the possibility that an inmate had set fire to a mattress.

That prison held more than 850 inmates, twice its capacity. As in Mexico, many prisoners were being held on drug charges in a country overrun by drug-trafficking gangs shipping cocaine to the United States and beyond.

Supervisors at the prison in Mexico were being held as part of the investigation, which Mr. Domene said would also determine whether guards took part.

In other prisons, inmates have been known to bribe guards for parties, drugs, prostitutes, cellphones, TVs, even their freedom.

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