At least two subway cars jumped off their tracks in a tunnel in Moscow's metro system during morning rush hour today, wounding 150 people, some of them severely, and killing at least 19 others, emergency officials say.
Rescue workers are busy at the scene of the derailment, which was reportedly due to an electrical problem. Reports of the number of dead and wounded often fluctuate in situations like this; we'll be updating this post as necessary.
An official at a crisis center says "a total of 120 people have been hospitalized, 50 of them are in a critical condition," according to the state-run news agency RIA Novosti.
Hundreds of passengers left the scene of the crash by walking down the tunnel to nearby stations; there have also been unconfirmed reports that some commuters had been trapped in one of the cars.
"One of the train drivers has not been found yet," Russia's Itar-TASS agency reports, adding that an official says the train had been moving at 70 kmph (43 mph).
The derailment took place around 8:30 a.m. local time on the Moscow Metro, one of the busiest subway systems in the world. It carries around 7 million passengers a day.
The train was between the Slaviansky Boulevard and Park Pobedy stations on the blue Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line when "a power outage led to the launch of a false warning that resulted in the sharp stop of a train," reports RIA Novosti, citing Moscow emergency officials.
"Park Pobedy is the deepest metro station in Moscow's subway system — 84 meters (275 feet) deep," the AP reports, "which made the rescue particularly hard. The station serves the vast park where the World War II museum is located."
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