BAKU, Azerbaijan -- As Azerbaijan mourned the victims of one of the world's worst subway disasters, survivors on Monday recalled harrowing escapes through a pitch-black tunnel billowing with clouds of toxic smoke.


Around 300 people died in a fire Saturday on a subway in Azerbaijan's capital Baku, and more than 260 were injured. President Heidar Aliyev and other officials blamed the accident on a malfunction in the electrical system.


"According to preliminary data, it was an accident, which happened because of a technical failure," Aliyev said.


He also said the investigation was still going on and nothing had been ruled out. "Everything will become clear within the next few days," he promised.


But the head of the subway system, Jafar Yusifov, said on television Monday night that only a "combat toxic agent" could explain the high death toll.


He also insisted that a "simple fire" would not have melted the metal frames of some of the cars. "It might be an act of sabotage," Yusifov said.


Several survivors said Monday that rescue workers and firefighters did not show up until more than two hours after the blaze erupted between two subway stations in central Baku, trapping terrified passengers in the tunnel. Survivors said panic broke out when the Gamidov, 26, said from his hospital bed. "People smashed the windows of the carriage, trying to escape."


Gamidov said he helped a woman and one of her two children clamber out of the carriage. The woman's stockings had caught on fire, badly burning her legs.


"Her other child had to remain behind," he said quietly.


In another bed in the Fifth Clinical Hospital, a skinny 12-year-old boy, Aziz Maradov, leaned against his pillows, his chest wheezing from the toxic smoke.


"I was so scared," he said.


Maradov was reunited with his 17-year-old brother, Mardan, in the hospital and had been told his mother was at another hospital. But out of earshot, a nurse confided the truth.


"She is dead," the nurse said. "He'll know soon enough."


Sweating with fever and hoarse from the poisonous fumes, a 33-year-old teacher, Kirami Khankishiyeva told her story staccato-fashion, then fell silent, her brown eyes wide and staring.


"There were screams and everyone was trying to jump out of the train. I was alone," she said, recalling how she stumbled some 2 kilometers down the dark tunnel, choking from the fumes, to the next station.


Manish Gurbanov, 53, said he climbed through an air duct to escape.


"We couldn't break the windows so we climbed out through a ventilation duct. I got through the tunnel by grabbing a cable on the top of the tunnel, but they say a lot of other people were electrocuted. People were dying all over the rails."


As survivors battled their injuries, their losses and their terrifying memories, citizens of the Azerbaijani capital grieved for the dead. Monday was the first of two official days of mourning.


Train drivers flashed their lights between the stations where the accident took place and red carnations tied with black ribbons lay at the two station entrances. Normal services resumed Sunday on the 29-kilometer network of 19 stations and despite the disaster, the subway was filled with regular commuters Monday.


Officials in this oil-rich former Soviet republic on the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea were still debating the full death toll Monday.


Azerbaijani Radio quoted Deputy Prime Minister Abbas Abbasov, head of a government investigating commission, as saying 291 died and 269 were injured. But morgue officials earlier said they counted at least 303 bodies, and Azerbaijan's Turan news agency quoted medical officials as putting the death toll at 337.


Turkey's Anatolia news agency said that three rescue workers, including one soldier, had also died.


Aliyev has promised victims' families state compensation of 1 million manats ($220) each.


Last year, some 20 people were killed in two separate terrorist attacks on the Baku metro. Both cases are still under investigation. But authorities have insisted there was no indication of terrorism in Saturday's fire.


Russian safety experts told Itar-Tass that panic might have been the main reason for the high death toll.


One expert said the fact that the train halted in a tunnel might have complicated matters, because the normal procedure was to try to reach a station.


(AP, Reuters)