Mexico City Subway Plunges from Overpass, Killing Thirteen

(Bloomberg) -- A raised subway track has collapsed in Mexico City on Monday night, plunging train cars with passengers aboard to the ground and killing at least 13 people, according to officials of the nation’s capital.

About 70 people have been injured in the accident, Myriam Urzua, the city’s civil protection secretary, said in an interview on Milenio TV. Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said on Twitter that a broken beam caused the accident on Line 12 of the metro system, which took place in the southeast side of the city.

Images broadcast on Milenio showed how the overpass collapsed and the train toppled onto automobile traffic below, amid a cloud of dust. Ambulances rushed the injured to several hospitals across the city while hundreds of fire fighters and civil defense personnel worked on trying to recover people under the rubble, TV images showed.

The overpass collapse risks hurting politically both Mayor Sheinbaum and Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard, two key allies of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who are seen as his potential successors.

The Metro line where the accident took place was built under Ebrard when he was mayor of Mexico’s capital, with the project suffering from long delays and design problems, while Sheinbaum has been in charge of the city for over two years now.

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