Maputo, Mozambique ? A train carrying weekend visitors to South Africa slammed into a freight train parked at a station in southern Mozambique on Saturday, killing 196 people and injuring hundreds more.

Authorities were investigating the cause of the crash. The Transport Minister said it appeared to be human error, saying the railway company would have to pay compensation.

“Dead bodies were lying all over,” Antonio Cevere, who was traveling on the passenger train and was injured, told Radio Mozambique.

Rescue workers with tractors and construction equipment were trying to free people trapped in the train’s twisted wreckage, and officials said the death toll could rise further in what was already the worst train disaster in the history of this impoverished southern African nation of 18 million people.

President Joachim Chissano declared the accident a national tragedy and called on people to donate blood for the injured and support those who had lost their families. Most of dead and injured were thought to be Mozambican.

The crash took place about 5 a.m. when the passenger train, which can hold more than 1,000 people, barreled into the back of the freight train at a station in the town of Moamba, about 40 miles north of the capital, Maputo.

It was unclear how fast the passenger train was going. The freight train was carrying cement.

The two trains had been attached when they left Maputo, but split up at a station outside the city. The freight train continued on to Moamba, with the passenger train following later.

The passenger train was heading to Ressano Garcia on the border with South Africa a popular weekend trip for Mozambicans going shopping in South Africa.

Health Minister Franscisco Songane said 192 people were killed and another 400 were injured. Later Saturday four more bodies were pulled from the mangled cars.

Mozambican television showed footage of a pile of bodies lying next to the train tracks, and soldiers and police searching for more victims.

“There are still people under there. When we got here, passengers were dying in our arms because we could not get them out quickly enough,” a police officer told the television station.

“Everything is destroyed, there are bodies that have been cut in half and we don’t know how to match them up, there are severed limbs,” said the officer, who was not identified.

The majority of the injured were taken to hospitals in Maputo in private cars and many people died along the way.

Transport Minister Tomas Salomao blamed the crash on the national railway company and said it would have to pay compensation. He indicated that human error was the cause.

“Now we have to deal with funerals and the people who are being treated in the hospitals,” he told state television. “Then we will established the type of assistance people need.”