Train wreck kills 46

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- The death toll in the head-on collision between a packed passenger train and a freight train in northwestern Zimbabwe rose to 46, police said Sunday.\nA railway worker who might have given a wrong signal was arrested and tested for alcohol, media reports said.\nRudo Muchemenyi of the western Matabeleand province police department told state television four more bodies were retrieved from the wreckage Sunday.\nPolice had reported 42 people killed in the crash Saturday and 64 injured, many seriously. All the dead were found in the charred wreckage that was gutted by fire.\nOnly 11 of the dead have been positively identified, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp. said in its nightly news.\nThe transport ministry blamed the crash on human error. State television reported the signals on that stretch of rail line -- the busiest in the country -- had been reported faulty since November. It said the state railroad company, troubled by shortages of equipment, also reported outages of electrically powered signals across the country, forcing some signalers to revert to handing written information cards to train crews on their scheduled stops.\nAbout 1,100 people traveling on the passenger train were headed for the resort town of Victoria Falls.\nBoth locomotive crews died instantly when the trains collided on a curve in the track near the coal mining center of Hwange, about 190 miles from the western city of Bulawayo.\nAt the time of the accident, the freight train was at full throttle, while the passenger train was picking up speed after a recent stop, the state Sunday Mail reported.\nThe newspaper said a trackside signal official was arrested and his blood alcohol level was tested. The results of the test were not immediately known.