Apr 24, 10:41 AM EDT

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) -- Aid workers and journalists who visited the
site of a North Korean train explosion Saturday said the blast
destroyed a rail station, gouged a 30-foot-deep crater and
ripped the roofs off buildings more than two miles away.

Pictures from China's Xinhua news agency showed a huge hole
that dwarfed onlookers in the city of Ryongchon.

"Buildings around were totally flattened," Jay Matta, a Red
Cross official, said by phone from Pyongyang, the North Korean
capital.

A three-story agricultural school near the station "was totally
leveled" by Thursday's blast, said Dr. Eigil Sorensen, the
World Health Organization representative in Pyongyang. "There
was nothing left. It was rubble."

At a three-story primary school about 300 yards from the
station, the roof was ripped away and the top floor collapsed,
he said.

At least 154 people were confirmed dead - 76 of them
schoolchildren - and 1,300 injured, China's official Xinhua
News Agency said in the first news report datelined from the
site. Few foreign journalists are allowed to work in North
Korea.

Some 129 public buildings were reported destroyed and 120
damaged, according to John Sparrow, a Red Cross spokesman in
Beijing.

Sparrow said that in telephone call Matta described "a crater
as though a fireball" had hit.

Accounts of the size of Ryongchon varied. Earlier reports said
it had as many as 130,000 people, but the aid workers who
visited Saturday said officials put the population at 27,000.

Aid workers said they didn't see bodies or badly injured
people, though some on the streets had facial injuries that
might have been caused by the blast.

"The impression from what we saw was that the initial rescue
operation was completed," Sorensen said.

The group invited to the site included about 40 diplomats and
officials of aid groups, Sorensen said.

North Korean officials said about 350 injured people were
hospitalized in Sinuiju, a bigger city on the Chinese border,
according to Sorensen.

Aid workers didn't go there Saturday because Sinuiju is a
special economic zone and North Korean officials hadn't
prepared the required entry permits, Sorensen said. But he said
they were promised access within the next two to three days.

Aid workers saw people pulling furniture and other belongings
from wrecked homes, Sorensen said.

"We could see people on oxcarts carrying their belongings ...
to relocate within the town to the homes of friends and
neighbors," he said.

The aid workers delivered supplies including surgical
materials, disinfectant and medicines, the WHO envoy said.

Matta of the Red Cross said the North Korean Red Cross
requested tents, cooking equipment and water purification
tablets.

Matta said there didn't appear to be a need for immediate
shelter.

"Local residents have taken in those who are homeless or
destitute," he said.