ANKARA, July 24 (AFP) - A Turkish court on Saturday charged three men over the deadly derailment of a showcase fast train amid increasing outrage at the government over the loss of 37 lives in one of the country's worst rail disasters.
The train's guard Koksal Coskun and its two drivers -- Fikret Karabulut and Recep Sonmez -- were charged with causing the death of several people through negligence and carelessness and sent to jail, the NTV news channel reported.
The newly-introduced fast express train, with nearly 250 people aboard, derailed on Thursday near the northwestern town of Pamukova while on its way from Istanbul to capital Ankara, its five carriages overturning and crashing into each other.
The crisis centre at the prime minister's office on Saturday increased the death toll from the tragedy to 37 from 36 after authorities identified a new victim. Eighty-one people were injured in the accident.
Turkish officials have said they need to carry out a full technical investigation before they can give the exact cause of the accident, but Transport Minister Binali Yildirm told a press conference on Friday that the drivers had exceeded the speed limit.
Yildirim said the train was travelling at 118 kilometers (71 miles) per hour, whereas the speed limit in the area of the crash was 80 kilometers per hour, but he refrained from directly putting the blame on the drivers.
But in remarks which contradict the minister, the lawyer for the three charged men, Ismail Gurses, told the Anatolia news agency Saturday that his clients were told by railway authorities that the train should move along at a speed of 130 kilometres an hour at the accident site.
Several Turkish newspapers on Saturday published a page of an official booklet distributed to engine drivers which corroborated the Gurses' claim.
According to the booklet, drivers could move at 130 kilometres an hour at 200 metres (660 feet) before the accident site, but they were supposed to have reduced the speed to 80 kilometres an hour 100 metres away from the site, the librela Radikal daily said.
"The document of lies," said the mass-circulation Hurriyet daily on its front page, while the popular daily Vatan wrote: "Evidence of murder".
Trade unions and civic groups announced Saturday that they would file complaints against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Transport Minister Yildirim and the head of the railway authority over the accident, accusing officials of turning the train's guard and drivers into scapegoats.
"Authorities have accused the train's staff after saying they never required the train to move at high speeds, but in fact, it was impossible to reduce the duration of the trip without breaking all the rules," Yavuz Zegerek, the head of the Hur Anadolu transport trade union, told a press conference in Ankara.
The new train linking Istanbul and Ankara opened last month with much funfare despite warnings that the country's decrepit tracks, untouched since the 1950s, would not withstand high-speed cars.
The so-called "accelerated" train travels at speeds of up to 150 kilometres (90 miles) per hour, reducing the duration of the 567-kilometre (340-mile) trip from Istanbul to Ankara from eight to five hours.
Turkish authorities have denied accusations that safety measures were neglected when the new train was launched, and Erdogan on Friday angrily rejected calls for heads to roll over the tragedy.