By Hajar El Kahlaoui
Rabat – A train traveling from Tangier to Casablanca caught fire on Friday morning, leading passengers outraged with ONCF’s official response to stage a protest by standing on the train tracks.
The causes of the fire are still unknown, and a passenger who was travelling on the train told Morocco World News that the train employees didn’t warn travelers about the fire.
Passengers took notice of the fire when they started smelling the smoke. Then, at 9:30 a.m. the train stopped in Sidi Bouknadel, 12 kilometers away from Salé.
“I took the Fes-Marrakech train this morning. It was stopping continuously. When we arrived to Sidi Bouknadel railway station, passengers of another train coming from Tangier and heading to Casablanca started boarding our train. The front of their train was burning, on the side of the train’s engine next to the the first class wagon,” the passenger stated.
When passengers headed to the other train, people were blocked inside the crowded train. The passenger said that the passengers of the burned train were not told anything by the railway company’s staff and that they started leaving the engine when they smelled the smoke.
“Everyone was scared. An old woman was screaming and she had difficulty to breathe. No one told us what was happening until we smelled the smoke on the train,” passengers told her.
Passengers blocked the train bound for Marrakech, standing on the train rails to protest against l’Office National des Chemins de Fer (ONCF), the state-owned railway company. For an hour, the train heading to Marrakech was stopped as the angry passengers barred its way.
Members of the National Gendarmerie, the Moroccan suburban police, arrived to remove the travelers from the railways. After continued protests from passengers who refuse to leave the railway, they all finally boarded the other train.
ONCF has recently seen growing criticism by passengers who frequently complain about train delays.
