Taiwan Releases Train Crash Suspect on Bond

HUALIEN, TAIWAN - A Taiwan court on Saturday released on bond the manager of a construction site whose truck authorities believe caused a train accident that killed at least 51 people.

The crash Friday was Taiwan's worst rail accident in seven decades. An express train hit the truck that had slid down a bank beside the track from the building site. The site's manager is suspected of having failed to properly engage the truck's brake. The train, with almost 500 people aboard, was traveling from Taipei, the capital, to Taitung on the east coast when it derailed in a tunnel just north of the city of Hualien. Forty-one people were in hospital Saturday, from among the 188 reported injured. Prosecutors had applied to a court to detain the manager on charges of causing death by negligence, a justice ministry official told reporters Saturday.