Chinese Families Mourn Loved Ones Killed in Wenzhou Train Accident

Grieving families of the victims of China's high-speed train crash laid their loved ones to rest on Friday.

The July 23 train crash that killed at least 40 people in eastern China has fueled a rare outpouring of public anger.

A high-speed train rammed into a stalled train late on Saturday, injuring at least 191 people. It’s China's worst railway accident since 2008.

Families gathered at a local morgue on Friday for cremation rites, while others paid their respects to the dead on the seventh day of mourning, according to Chinese tradition. Emotions overwhelmed many.

40-year-old Liu Canlan is paying respects to her late husband, 42-year-old Chen Wei. Liu last spoke to her husband on the phone when he was still on the train. He promised to be home for dinner.

[Liu Canlan, Husband Killed on Train]:
"I kept calling out to him but there was no answer. He just left us, a wife and son, like this. How could this happen? How could that high-speed train be so lousy? It's like a tiger that just ate people up."

The Chinese people have accused officials of trying to cover up details of the accident because evidence was removed from the scene only two days after the disaster.

A Chinese railway research institute took responsibility on Thursday for a flaw in signaling equipment that led to the accident and made a public apology.

The state-run Xinhua news agency, quoting railway authorities, said a signal that should have turned red after lightning stalled a train, remained green, but railway staff failed to notice the signal failure, causing the crash.

43-year-old Zhang Meilan, who lost her niece, was at the morgue with the girl's family for her last rites. Zhang says the family was asked to sign a compensation agreement by the end of Friday, but was not given details of the compensation, so they refused it.

[Zhang Meilan, Niece Killed on Train]:
"Everything that the government leaders have told us has been very good, and of course we thank them very much. But the main thing for us is the response from the railways department and how they will help the families of the victims deal with this problem. Today, the district office told us that if we do not sign (on the compensation agreement), they are going to leave. They said if we want to wait, we can wait here but they would not care about us. What kind of reasoning is this?"

The Railway Ministry is still investigating the cause of the accident, and has ordered a two-month safety review of railway operations.

The results of the accident probe are set to be released by mid-September.