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BEIJING - A third official has been sacked over a train crash in east China that killed at least 70 people, the nation's worst rail accident in more than a decade, state press reported on Tuesday.
A passenger train from Beijing careered off a track in the eastern province of Shandong in the early hours of Monday morning, slamming into another incoming train.
Guo Jiguang, deputy director of the railway bureau of Jinan, was dismissed and is the subject of an investigation by the Ministry of Railways, Xinhua quoted the railways minister as saying, without explaining his dismissal.
He joined two other officials sacked on Monday, just hours after the crash.
Guo's boss Chen Gong lost his job as director of the railway bureau, and Chai Tiemin was dismissed as head of the Communist Party in the bureau, according to Xinhua.
Chinese authorities said on Tuesday that the passenger train from Beijing that derailed was travelling at 131 kilometres (81 miles) an hour, well in excess of that rail section's 80-kilometre-an-hour limit.
The latest official death toll from the accident released on Monday night was 70, with 416 injured, making it the worst train accident in China since 1997. - AFP/al
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