Inside North Korea: historic images reveal full horror of a city 'obliterated'

The last iron curtain on earth was tentatively lifted yesterday to give an unprecedented glimpse of life, and death, in North Korea in the wake of Thursday's rail disaster, which claimed up to 2,000 casualties.

The last iron curtain on earth was tentatively lifted yesterday to give an unprecedented glimpse of life, and death, in North Korea in the wake of Thursday's rail disaster, which claimed up to 2,000 casualties.

A nation that has never knowingly before permitted news cameras to record its darker side allowed the world to see the devastation in the city of Ryongchon.

The access, part of a visit by some 40 diplomats and aid officials, came as the full horror of the accident started to become apparent. Eyewitnesses describes the explosion as a fireball like a nuclear bomb, which sent up a black mushroom-shaped cloud, flattened dozens of buildings, scattered debris for miles around, and left a crater 50ft deep. A Red Cross worker said the railway station and immediate surroundings were "obliterated" and hundreds of buildings up to three miles away were destroyed.

Jay Matta, a Red Cross official, said: "There was just rubble everywhere and very large craters in the ground ... It's just a mess." Another aid worker said people were pulling furniture and other belongings from wrecked homes. "We could see people on oxcarts carrying their belongings," he said.

Although they saw some people walking around with facial injuries, all of the dead and the badly injured had been taken away. "Hospitals are jam -packed with people injured," the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo quoted a Chinese witness as saying.

In the small community of North Korean defectors in Seoul, a story is circulating that Kim Jong Il, the North's leader, narrowly avoided an assassination attempt by changing his schedule at the last moment. According to the rumours, residents of Ryongchon were not informed of his new schedule. Some 700 children were lined up on the platform to wave flags in greeting but were caught in a blast timed to kill him as his train went past.

Jang Song Gun, an official in charge of rescue efforts, said that the blasts occurred at noon after an electricity pole was knocked down when an oil wagon collided with two other wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate fertiliser. The fire caused by the short circuit ignited the oil wagon and the chemicals as the trucks were being shunted.