[Wolf Blitzer, Cnn:] Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting today from New York. More now on the breaking news, the deadly Amtrak derailment. It started as a routine trip. An Amtrak passenger train on its way from Washington, D.C., to New York City, all of a sudden chaos. Passengers and luggage catapulted in the air as the entire train left the tracks and crashed.
[Mayor Michael Nutter , Philadelphia:] It is an absolute disastrous mess.
[Blitzer:] A flashpoint of terror, as surveillance video captures the deadly moments on board the Amtrak Northeast Regional Train 188. The train, traveling from Washington to New York City, at about 9:30 p.m., while passing through the Port Richmond neighborhood in Philadelphia, the train derailed, sending all seven cars flying from the tracks. And the engine separating from the rest of the train. The impact tore the train apart. Dozens scrambling to safety by crawling through the overturned cars.
[Unidentified Male:] Keep crawling, OK. Where am I crawling to? Just crawl. Crawl forward, sir.
[Blitzer:] More than 200 of the 243 passengers and crew on board were sent to area hospitals. At least six have died and eight others remain in critical condition.
[Gov. Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania:] The human tragedy, the devastation, I can't imagine.
[Blitzer:] Let's get an update from the other crash site. Kate Bolduan is joining us once again. She's in Philadelphia. Kate, the mayor of Philadelphia expected to hold a news conference shortly. Tell us about that.
[Kate Bolduan, Cnn Correspondent:] Yes. The mayor, he's been he's been doing a very good job of keeping everyone updated and clearly he was here last night. He was here again this morning and he's going to be holding another press briefing with other officials that will be held in a short time at around 2:00 or just after 2:00 here in the East. At that time I'm told they will have new information, they will be in the position to bring us new information, though they would not go into details of exactly what that is. With so many questions outstanding, you can't even speculate exactly what some of that new information could be that they're going to be bringing to us. But there are a lot of questions that we can pose to the mayor specifically, though, here at the scene, Wolf. I think what's important in terms of the investigation, the investigation is really on two fronts. What's happening here on the ground behind me, back there, obviously police are not letting us get any further than we are now, as well as the investigation here on the ground in terms of forensics and then the investigation, the analysis if you will, of the black box. That is already under way because the black box has already been recovered and has been taken to their main point of operations in Delaware and that is being analyzed. Here on the scene early this morning, investigators were seen walking the track, paying very close attention to the curve or the bend in the track, Wolf, where the crash really occurred and that could be key. The curve and how the train entered that curve could be key in the investigation and how and exactly what happened. And why I say that is because my colleague Rene Marsh has some good information from investigators that they are seriously in a preliminary sense, they are seriously looking into the factor of speed and the role that speed could have played in this crash. Trains along the northeast corridor, they can go in excess of 100 miles an hour. That's absolutely aloud, but when they're in a residential area or they're going around some of these curves they are required to reduce their speed. We're told the speed limit around this area is about 50 miles an hour. That should be an easy bit of information to come forward. That's one of the easy things to come from that black box that's being that's being analyzed right now. That is something that we hear from the NTSB, the information in that black box, that could be readily available relatively soon and that could be a key factor. At least preliminarily that is one of their big focuses is right now. Wolf, that's happening here on the ground and the black box being analyzed in Delaware. So a lot of outstanding questions because when we heard from the NTSB earlier, Wolf, they said essentially the same thing that we're doing. They said, we've got a lot of questions, you've got a lot of questions, it's really just getting under way, they're just starting to mobilize their important teams that are all broken up to look at signals, to look at mechanical factors, to look at the train track. They break them up into teams to begin the forensic analysis of the scene here and that's really just getting under way because search and rescue teams have to clear out and finish with their priority of making sure everyone was taken off that train if there were still people in the train and that is another question we've got for the mayor when he speaks to us again at 2:15 Wolf.
[Blitzer:] All right. Kate Bolduan on the scene for us in Philadelphia, thanks. And we'll have much more coverage of the Philadelphia Amtrak derailment coming up as Kate just mentioned. The mayor, Michael Nutter, will hold a news conference, that's coming up soon. We will have live coverage, of course, here on CNN. But there's other news we're following, including major international news. A North Korean official, the Defense minister actually, reportedly has been executed for treason. But the method of execution is raising a lot of eyebrows.