About 50 people were injured when a train derailed after leaving from Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo, state media reported on Saturday.

"The train was travelling from Bulawayo to Harare, was carrying about 1000 people," police superintendent Alex Chagwedera was quoted as saying in the Herald newspaper of the Friday accident. "About 50 people were injured."

Three coaches of the passenger train had derailed and the cause of the accident is yet to be established, according to the report.

Sapa