The death toll from last Thursday's train explosion in North Korea could rise above 161, Sweden's envoy to the country said today.
International agencies had relief operations under control, said Sweden's ambassador to North Korea, Mr Paul Beijer, but he added he feared the death toll could rise with hundreds of burn victims suffering in crude hospitals with minimal supplies.
"There are still some 300 seriously wounded people in hospital," he said.
South Korea's Red Cross was meeting its North Korean counterpart to work out how to move emergency supplies to Ryongchon in the isolated North, where hundreds of people were seriously injured and homeless after the explosion.
Scores of primary school children were among those killed when the two trains exploded, destroying a school and large parts of the town, and aid workers who visited victims at nearby Sinuiju Provincial Hospital described horrible suffering.
Aid workers initially put the toll at 154 dead and hundreds injured after the explosion of two trains at North Korea's Ryongchon station near the Chinese border just hours after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had passed through by train.
But Mr Niels Juel, regional relief coordinator for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, reported his staff said the toll had risen to 161.