The death toll in this week's collision of two passenger trains in eastern China rose Wednesday to 71, state media reported.
Sixty of the more than 400 people injured in Monday's accident in Shandong province were in critical condition, the official news agency Xinhua said.
Preliminary investigations found that one of the trains was travelling too fast, causing it to derail and plow into the second train about 70 kilometres east of the provincial capital, Jinan, reported the dpa. The railway operator had apparently not informed the train's engineer of the speed limit on the stretch of track between Jinan and the port city of Qingdao, media reports said.
Three railway officials have been fired in the wake of China's worst rail accident in a decade.