Tehran - (AFP) - At least 17 people were killed when a train derailed near the city of Tabas, in central Iran, during a journey between the cities of Mashhad (northeast) and Yazd (center) on Wednesday morning.

"17 people were killed and 37 wounded were taken to hospital," said the authority's spokesman, Mujtaba Khalidi, as a result of the accident, pointing to the possibility of the death toll rising due to the presence of critical cases among the wounded.

The preliminary toll provided by Khalidi on Wednesday morning stated that ten people were killed and others injured, at least 12 of whom were in critical condition.

The train derailed at 5:30 am on Wednesday local time (one after midnight GMT), according to what the official media reported, quoting rescue officials.

Officials confirmed that five of the 11 carriages that make up the train derailed as a result of the accident.

The deputy head of the Iranian Railways Company, Mir Hassan Mousavi, told the official channel that "the train, which had 348 passengers on board, deviated after contact with a drilling machine" that was near the tracks.

Pictures published by ISNA showed a yellow tracked excavator flipping on its side, while the bottom of it touched carriages from the train still on the tracks that extend in a desert area in the center of the country.

Also, aerial footage shown by local media showed that at least four carriages derailed, including two that were completely separated from the rest of the train.
Some of the carriages appeared to have been toppled on their side and sustained significant damage.

Tabas is located in South Khorasan Province, about 900 km by road southeast of Tehran, on the road between Yazd, one of the most prominent cities in the center of the country, and Mashhad in the northeast, which is the second largest city in Iran and includes the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth infallible imam of the Shiites.

The train derailment comes more than two weeks after the collapse of part of a building in the city of Abadan in Khuzestan Province in the southwest of the country, in an accident that killed 43 people, according to the latest figures announced by officials on Tuesday, as searches continue under the rubble.

On May 23, a large section of the ten-storey "Metropole" building collapsed in Abadan, one of the main cities in the border province with Iraq, causing one of the worst disasters resulting from similar accidents in years.

The building collapse incident sparked a series of popular movements in solidarity with the families of the victims, interspersed with protests against corruption and calls for those responsible to be held accountable.

Two trains collided in northern Iran in November 2016, killing 44 people and injuring more than eighty others, in one of the worst railway disasters in the Islamic Republic in years.

In the aftermath of that accident, the head of the railway company, Mohsen Bursaid Aghaei, announced his resignation, "as an expression of my social responsibility and sympathy for the survivors of this accident."

The official, who at the time held the position of Deputy Minister of Roads, offered an "apology" to those affected by the accident, noting that his resignation came after the announcement of the arrest of four of his employees by the judicial authorities.
In January 2010, at least seven people were killed when a train derailed between Mashhad and Tehran.