Calamity, Worst Rail Crash, Horror, Tragedy: Tanzanian newspapers run out of superlatives to describe the accident.

Horrific, horrendous, shocking, grim, ghastly, harrowing, gruesome - no words can describe accurately what occurred on the central line.

Daily News editorial

"People are really devastated," a journalist with the Daily News told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

Mbuka Nguanakilala said that hundreds of relatives were trying to get inside Dodoma hospital for news about their close ones, but that the authorities had closed the gate.

Doctors mobilised

"I spoke to a woman who seemed really angry. She wanted to get inside and see if her brother was alive. But the authorities could not let everybody in," he said.

"It's a very bad situation, the hospitals are full to capacity and we have a shortage of doctors," Health Minister Anna Abdallah told Reuters news agency.

The minister, who is herself a doctor, helped to treat some of the victims in hospital.

Doctors working at nearby hospitals have been asked to go to the crash site.

"Horrific, horrendous, shocking, grim, ghastly, harrowing, gruesome - no words can describe accurately what occurred on the central line," said an editorial in the state-owned Daily News.

Lack of policy

The BBC's Joseph Warungu in Dar es Salaam says that the Tanzanian press is unanimous in drawing comparisons with the accident which occurred in a mine in Tanzania last week, where up to 42 miners were killed.

The papers say that 1,500 people have been killed in air and rail crashes in the country over the last 10 years, and they criticise the government for its inaction.

They say 100 people were killed in the last major rail accident in the country, 10 years ago, and they wonder why nothing has been done to make sure disasters on a similar scale do not happen again.

Editors ask why no disaster management policy has been adopted to address the causes of these accidents.

Joint effort

"It's an unmitigated disaster, I've never seen anything like this, it was just terrible," member of parliament Hashim Saggaf told Reuters news agency.

Many members of parliament, which sits in Dodoma, took part in the rescue effort and used their cars to ferry the injured to hospital.

Many other drivers in the city also volunteered to use their cars as ambulances.

"It is the worst train accident in the history of Tanzania Railways Corporation," Sukulu Sudi, a spokeswoman for the corporation told AP news agency.

The authorities have announced that an official inquiry will be opened into the crash, and they have declared two days of national mourning.