Arson attack in subway kills 120

DAEGU, South Korea -- Fire raced through two crowded subway trains in South Korea on Tuesday after a man ignited a carton filled with flammable material, killing about 120 people and injuring at least 138, officials said.\nA suspect police said had a history of mental illness was under interrogation in Daegu, South Korea's third-largest city. Police still did not know what motivated the attack or what substance the attacker used to start the blaze.\nMany of the injured were seriously hurt, authorities said.\nThe fire started in one six-car train at a station, igniting seats and spreading to another train also stopped at the station, officials said.\nLim Dae-yoon, chief of Daegu city's east district municipal government, estimated the number of people killed at about 120. "We believe the death toll will not rise drastically from that," Lim said.\nMany bodies were burned beyond recognition. Officials said they would have to wait for DNA tests to determine an exact number of people killed, which could take weeks.\nOther people died of asphyxiation on the train platform. One man said his missing daughter called by mobile phone to say there was a fire and the subway door was not opening.\nFirefighters gave horrifying accounts of the scene underground: bodies of victims asphyxiated as they tried to escape up the stairs; on the platform were the ashen bones of those trapped in the flames.\nPolice were interrogating Kim Dae-han, 56, who witnesses said carried the milk carton into the subway car, according to Kim Byong-hak, a police lieutenant in Daegu. Another police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the suspect had been treated for mental illness.\n"When the man tried to use a cigarette lighter to light the box, some passengers tied to stop him. Apparently a scuffle erupted and the box exploded into flames," the officer said.\nAuthorities said the fire was put out by 1 p.m., about three hours after it started, but toxic gas in the tunnel delayed rescue efforts, the Yonhap news agency said. The acrid odor of burned plastic still wafted over the fire scene hours after the flames had been put out.\nThe television station YTN aired footage of the chaotic scene inside a nearby hospital reportedly showing the suspect being attended to by nurses. The man sat frowning on a bed wearing a hospital smock, his face and hands smudged from soot from the fire.\nYTN, without citing sources, also reported that the suspect worked as a truck driver and had once threatened to burn down the hospital where he had received unsatisfactory treatment.\nIn the minutes after the fire began, thick black smoke billowed out of ventilator shafts of the subway. Downtown traffic came to a standstill as ambulances rushed to the scene. Orange suit-clad firefighters wearing oxygen tanks rushed into the subway.\nKim Bok-sun, 45, said her missing daughter, 21-year-old Kang Yeon-ju, was on the burning train and called in panic.\n"She only said that there was a fire and the train door wasn't opening, so I told her to just break open a window and get out," she said, her voice trembling with emotion. Kim called her daughter back a few minutes later, "but she never answered the phone."\nRescuers brought victims, their faces and clothes black with soot, up to the street on stretchers and slid them into ambulances. One witness detailed the terrifying scene inside the subway as the fire ignited.\nOne man told YTN that his friend called on his cell phone and said he was trapped inside one of the cars. The unidentified man told YTN that he had called subway officials and they were unaware of the fire at the time.