Subway Fire Kills 289 in Azerbaijan : Disaster: Gases trapped in poorly maintained tunnel explode, spewing fumes and smoke. Faulty Soviet-era equipment is blamed for accident in Baku, the capital of newly independent republic.

MOSCOW — In the deadliest accident in the history of underground travel, fire and noxious gases killed nearly 300 subway passengers in the capital of the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, officials reported Sunday.

The death toll from the Saturday night disaster in Baku stood at 289 late Sunday, and the Azerbaijani news agency Turan quoted firefighters as predicting that the fatalities could rise as high as 600. Hundreds of people were injured.

Gases trapped in an aging and ill-repaired tunnel were ignited by a spark from a faulty overhead high-voltage cable, blasting a hole in the roof of one car and filling the train with flames and thick smoke, Russian television reported in footage from Baku.

The accident occurred about 200 yards from a station, and initial reports said 70 people were evacuated to safety before fire and smoke forced back rescue workers.

But accounts from survivors told of a harrowing overnight ordeal in which hundreds of panic-stricken passengers were stranded in dark, smoke-shrouded subway cars as the fire raged around them.

“I tried to open the carriage doors, but I couldn’t manage,” recalled one bandaged, gasping passenger interviewed by Russia’s Independent Television network from his hospital bed in Baku, a city of about 2 million on the Caspian Sea.

When someone finally managed to pry open the steel doors, “it was like an avalanche of people spilling onto us,” the survivor said.

It was not known how many people were on the train, officials said.

Although the Azerbaijani capital’s subway has been the scene of two bomb attacks by political rivals of President Heydar A. Aliyev, officials blamed the explosion and fire on the decrepit state of the Baku system.

Aliyev proclaimed two days of mourning after the extent of the disaster became clear early Sunday, when firefighters were able to quell the flames enough to reach the charred bodies of the victims.

The Azerbaijani deputy prime minister put in charge of an accident inquest, Abas Abasov, told Turan that the fire was caused by “outdated Soviet equipment.”

Throughout the newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union, poorly maintained infrastructure, from airports to pipelines, is falling into ruin and exposing people and the environment to danger.

The breakup of the centrally planned and supplied Soviet Union four years ago left remote regions of the former Communist empire with big-city expenses that overwhelm populations impoverished by the chaotic transition to market economies.

Even in oil-rich areas like Azerbaijan, investment in transportation and public services has been minimal as corrupt officials and a flourishing mafia bilk the profitable industries for their own gain. Azerbaijan’s 7 million citizens have also been weakened by the protracted war with neighboring Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“This kind of tragedy can happen any minute, anywhere in the former Soviet Union,” said Arif Yunusov, a historian reached by telephone in Baku on Sunday. “Yesterday, fate chose us. It’s terrible.”

A fire safety official for Moscow’s extensive subway system told the Itar-Tass news agency that the staggering death toll in Baku was probably caused by poisonous hydrocyanic acid and carbon monoxide released by burning seat padding, floor coverings and other synthetic materials.

The official, Valentin Ageyev, said the rail cars used in the Baku subway system were built in the 1960s and lack any fire-retardant qualities.

In Los Angeles, where a 4.4-mile stretch of subway in the Downtown area is already in operation and other legs of the $5.8-billion project are under construction, engineers are expected to meet today to “reassure themselves” that the Baku disaster could not be repeated here, said Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman Andrea Greene.

Greene said the local subway’s fire-prevention system--much newer than the equipment in use in Azerbaijan--relies on sophisticated smoke sensors and a central control facility to head off a far-reaching blaze.

“It’s top of the line, state of the art. It’s a hair-trigger system where any smoke registers very quickly,” she said. “This system is so secure it was built exactly to avoid what happened an ocean away [in Azerbaijan].”

Nonetheless, the Los Angeles subway system has not been immune to fire and gas problems.

A spectacular 1990 underground fire during construction of the now-complete Downtown leg of the subway collapsed a 150-foot section of tunnel, and more recent blazes have marred other stretches of construction and have injured workers.

Critics, meanwhile, have questioned whether the system includes adequate safeguards to insulate the tunnels from underground gases and to detect dangerous concentrations.

In April, a gas explosion at a South Korean subway construction site killed 101 people. The April blast in the southeastern city of Taegu, blamed on human error, sent shock waves across the nation and raised widespread public anger.

Times staff writer Eric Lichtblau in Los Angeles contributed to this report.