"According to our information, at least 100 passengers have perished and dozens have been injured in the derailment of a goods train," said government spokesman and information minister Toussaint Tshilombo Send.

The United Nations mission in Congo (MONUC) said earlier that at least 68 people died and 120 were injured when the train derailed some 170 kilometres (105 miles) north of Kananga, the capital of Western Kasai province.

The injured had been transported to a hospital near the crash site, which is in the centre of the country.

State railway operator SNCC official Medard Illunga said the unusually high death toll for an accident involving a goods train had to do with "clandestine passengers who habitually travel aboard goods carriages unbeknownst to SNCC agents".

"Several bodies have been found crowded into the wagons," Illunga said.

The SNCC set up an inquiry to determine the cause of the accident, the second in Western Kasai province in the space of three weeks, while the government has asked the Transport Ministry to rapidly conduct its own probe.

The train linked the cities of Ilebo and Kananga, which are some 300 kilometres (188 miles) apart. It derailed when it met travelled over a slope near the Lwembe River, the SNCC said.

Train accidents are relatively frequent in the DRC, where the colonial-era rail network has undergone little maintenance since independence in 1960.

Send said that President Joseph Kabila and Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga had decided to send a government delegation to the area to evaluate the situation and assist victims.

The team would include the ministers of interior, health, humanitarian affairs and transport, the information minister added.

The senior officials were to make their way to the scene Friday morning, according to the Humanitarian Affairs Minister Jean-Claude Muyambo.

Twenty people were known to have been killed when a freight train derailed in southeast Democratic Republic of Congo in February.

The victims were also described as stowaways in that accident, but it had not been clear at the time if they were fare-dodgers or included people who had illegally entered DR Congo from neighbouring Zambia.

The train, which was transporting mostly food supplies derailed at Katanga, about 75 kilometres (45 miles) from the Zambian border. About 15 people were injured, a Red Cross official said.

In November 2005, dozens of passengers were killed in a rail accident in the DRC when the train they were riding crossed a bridge that knocked them off the top.

A local official said at the time that people sitting on top of the train, as often happens in African nations and other poor countries, were swept into the air when some of their luggage snagged on the beams of the bridge across the Lufulu river.