| Local police stand on a track and watch as the crashed trains are removed from the site of the accident in Amagasaki, Japan |
For increasingly frustrated relatives gathered at a makeshift morgue in a gymnasium in Amagasaki, the numbers do not add up from Monday's train crash. Rescuers say they believe there are only about 10 more bodies to extract from a carriage embedded in an apartment building, but dozens of people are unaccounted for.
Police say all the bodies at the morgue, except a few, have been identified.
Yoichi Ishikawa is still looking for his father.
Mr. Ishikawa says he has searched every possible place and has no choice, but to believe his father's body is in the train. He says the scene of the crushed carriages has left him beyond a state of shock.
Rescuers were only able to reach the first carriage Wednesday after the second train car, wrapped around the building, was finally peeled away.
Rescuer Kazu Oka of the Amagasaki Fire Department says the first car is mostly on its side with the roof facing out and the carriage's nose embedded in a wall.
Many experts say the mangled wreckage leads them to conclude that the train was traveling more than 100 kilometers an hour when it derailed at a curve where the maximum speed limit is 70 kilometers per hour.
Yasuo Sato, an investigator with the Transport Ministry's rail accident division, says the rails were not severely damaged and this means the accident was not a typical derailment. He did not elaborate.
The train was operated by a 23-year-old with less than one year on the job and who had been reprimanded on his performance.
Officials say it will still be some time before they are able to determine with any certainty what caused Japan's worst train crash in more than 40 years.