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Authorities said in an update from the rescue operation that 36 passengers suffered “cardiac arrest outside the hospital,” meaning they had no signs of life.
According to the police, 72 people are still trapped in the carriages and 61 passengers have been taken to hospital.
A short video shared by the Central Emergency Operations Center showed rescuers arriving at the scene and the doors of a car swiveled.
A live broadcast by a local media group, UDN, saw at least two undamaged train cars near the tunnel and rescuers removing trapped passengers from the scene.
The office of Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said it had instructed hospitals to prepare for a “heavy casualty event.”
“The top priority now is to save the trapped people,” the presidency said in a statement.
The accident occurred on the eastern Taiwan railway line around 9:30 a.m. M. local time (4 hours and 30 minutes in Lithuania) near the coastal city of Hualiano.
The eight-car train traveled from Taipei to the southeastern city of Taitung, carrying about 350 passengers, the rescue center said.
The disaster began at the beginning of a long weekend of the annual Qingming Festival, during which people often visit and keep the graves of their loved ones.
Tourists traveling to the less populated east coast often use Taiwan’s eastern railway line.
A line with many tunnels and bridges stretches through high mountains and narrow gorges and then descends into the Huadong Valley.
The last time a similar life-threatening disaster occurred in Taiwan was in 2018, when 18 people were killed when a train derailed and capsized at the southern end of the same railway line.
The train conductor of those eight cars was later charged with negligent manslaughter. The disaster also injured more than 200 of the train’s 366 passengers.
It was the largest train accident in Taiwan since 1991, when 30 collisions between Miaoli killed 30 and injured 112 other passengers.
In 1981, a passenger train crashed into a truck at a Xinja crossing, killing 30 people.
In 2003, 17 people died and another 156 were injured when a train fell into the abyss in the Alishan Mountains.
