Survivors of an explosion in an Italian seaside town described yesterday how burnt victims ran through blazing streets to escape the inferno.

At least sixteeen people including three children were killed and thirty-four were injured after a freight train carrying liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) was derailed in the Tuscan town of Viareggio before midnight on Monday. At least five people are still missing and 1,000 have been evacuated.

Police said that five wagons at the back of the fourteen-wagon train, which was on its way to Pisa, left the tracks and crashed next to the station. The crash ruptured the tanks carrying the LPG and the fumes ignited.

Witnesses described how residents, many in their night clothes or naked, fled blazing streets. “There were dead people, bodies in the street which had been thrown from their houses by the blast and so many people who were fleeing who were losing their skin because they were burnt,” Roberto Galli, a resident, said.

Folco Apanti, who runs the station bar, saw the train pass through the station in flames. “It was incredible, like something in a film,” he said.

He called the police but by then the train had been derailed and crashed. A series of explosions, some caused by parked cars catching fire, followed.

Luca Lunardini, the Mayor of Viareggio, said that two buildings collapsed and four or five others had been affected.

Dante Barcaroli, who lived on the first floor of a block of flats near the station, tried to open the window when he saw “gleams of fire”. He said: “Fortunately my wife shouted at me not to open the window. The next thing, the flames shot up high into the sky, flames and smoke.”

Mr Barcaroli and his wife ran into the road and found the body of a woman and the body of a youth on his scooter, his helmet still on his head. “He had burnt like a human torch,” Mr Barcaroli told Corriere della Sera.

The neighbours of a 17-year-old Moroccan named Hamza said that he had died after going into a burning building to save his sister. The two-year-old girl survived.

Mr Lunardini said that 300 firefighters were trying to find survivors. An emergency hospital tent has been put up. Raffaale Gargiulo, a police spokesman, said that some bodies were burnt so badly “it will be very difficult to identify them”.

The two train drivers, who were injured, are being questioned in hospital. One reportedly told police that he had felt a jolt when they were about 200m (650ft) beyond the station.

There is speculation that the crash was caused by damage to the tracks or a problem with the train’s braking system. Railway officials said it appeared that the undercarriage of one of the wagons had collapsed, tipping it over.

The five wagons containing LPG were registered to the Polish railway company PKP and the German company Deutsche Bahn AG.

Rescue efforts are being co-ordinated by Guido Bertolaso, the head of the Italian Civil Protection Agency who oversaw relief efforts after the earthquake in L’Aquila in April, where next week’s G8 summit is to be held.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister, arrived in Viareggio to inspect the damage and console survivors. He was greeted with applause and whistles and shouts of “buffoon” — an apparent reference to the scandals in his private life.

Officials said that the lessons of the disaster would be discussed in parliament today.

A greater disaster was averted when railway staff halted two passenger trains that had been due to arrive in Viareggio within minutes of the blast.

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