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AMAGASAKI, Japan (CBS) ― The death toll in a train derailment in western Japan rose to 106 by early Thursday, just two days after a packed commuter train jumped the tracks and hurtled into an apartment complex in the deadliest Japanese rail accident in four decades. More than 440 were injured.

The blue-and-silver carriage lay twisted against the wall of an apartment building, bent grotesquely around the corner by another ruptured car from the derailed commuter train. A third car lay flattened under the wreckage.

Hundreds of helmeted workers — their jumpsuits of orange, tan, blue, white and black denoting various government agencies — clambered over the torn metal Monday pulling out the dead and injured in Japan's deadliest rail accident in four decades.

Investigators focused on excessive speed and a 23-year-old train driver's lack of experience after the crowded commuter train jumped the rails Monday on a curve and plowed into the apartment building just a few yards from the tracks.

Rescuers worked into the night trying to free survivors from twisted rail carriages left when the train hit the nine-story building's parking garage.

Late Monday, rescuers trained floodlights on the damaged cars and administered emergency medical care to three conscious survivors, but were hampered by worries about a gasoline leak, said Amagasaki Fire Department official Shohei Matsuda. Others were also inside but they were feared dead.

Meanwhile, distraught relatives rushed to hospitals to search lists of the injured and dead. Takamichi Hayashi said his elder brother, 19-year-old Hiroki, had called their mother on a mobile phone from inside one of the train cars just after the crash but remained unaccounted for. He said he had heard Hiroki was among those still inside the wreckage.

Investigators immediately focused on whether excessive speed or the actions of the driver caused the crash in an urban area near Amagasaki, about 250 miles west of Tokyo.

The investigation is really focusing on the driver, reports CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen. This was a young, inexperienced driver -- he'd been on the job less than a year. Train drivers in Japan are under intense pressure to get to the stations exactly on time. To be late is to be in trouble with your boss, and this train was running late.

The 23-year-old driver had overshot the stop line at the last station before the accident.

The tracks do have safety equipment that will slow the trains down even if the driver does not, but in this case the equipment was not working, Petersen reports. This is one of the oldest tracks in Japan, and that surely will also be a focus of the upcoming investigation.

The seven-car commuter train was carrying 580 passengers when it derailed at 9:18 a.m., wrecking an automobile in its path before slamming into a nine-story apartment complex just yards away. Two of the five derailed cars were flattened against the wall of the building, and hundreds of rescue workers and police swarmed the wreckage and tended to the injured.

"There was a violent shaking, and the next moment I was thrown to the floor ... and I landed on top of a pile of other people," passenger Tatsuya Akashi told NHK. "I didn't know what happened, and there were many people bleeding."

The Amagasaki Fire Department said the death toll had hit 57, and a Hyogo prefectural (state) police official said at least 440 people had been taken to hospitals, among them 137 with broken bones and other serious injuries.

The accident was the worst rail disaster in nearly 42 years in Japan, which is home to one of the world's most complex and heavily traveled rail networks. A three-train crash in November 1963 killed 161 people in Tsurumi, outside Tokyo.

Monday's accident was under investigation. "There are many theories but we don't know for sure what caused the accident," Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said. "The prime minister instructed us to respond with urgency."

Transport Minister Kazuo Kitagawa told reporters he would order all of Japan's railway operators to conduct safety inspections in the coming days.

"It's tragic," Kitagawa said at the scene. "We have to investigate why this horrible accident happened."

Survivors said the force of the derailment sent passengers tumbling through the inside of the cars. Photos taken by an NHK reporter aboard the train showed passengers piled on the floor and some clawing to escape from the busted shells of the cars. The derailed train cars had smashed into the first-floor parking garage of the apartment complex, NHK said.

Investigators struggled to come up with reasons for the crash. Tsunemi Murakami, the train operator's safety director, estimated that the train would have had to have been going 82 mph to have jumped the track purely because of excessive speed.

He said it still was not certain how fast the train was running at the time of the accident. The crash happened at a curve after a straightaway, requiring the driver to slow to a speed of 43 mph, Murakami said.

Experts also suspected speed was to blame.

"If the train hadn't hit anything before derailing ... the train was probably speeding. For the train to flip, it had to be traveling at a high speed. I would say it was going 50 kph (31 mph) above the speed limit," Kazuhiko Nagase, a Kanazawa Institute of Technology professor and train expert, told NHK.

"Our most important task now is to rescue the passengers from the accident and we are doing our best," West Japan Railway Co. President Takeshi Kakiuchi told reporters.

NHK reported that the automatic braking system at that stretch of track is among the oldest in Japan. The system stops trains at signs of trouble without requiring drivers to take emergency action, but the older system is less effective in halting trains traveling at high speeds, NHK said.

The driver's inexperience may also have been a factor. The driver — identified as 23-year-old Ryujiro Takami — had obtained his train operator's license in May 2004. One month later, he overran a station and was issued a warning for his mistake, railway officials and police said.

Authorities mobilized for a speedy rescue. The central government in Tokyo dispatched Self-Defense Force soldiers to the disaster scene to assist.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi offered condolences to families of passengers who were killed, as did Emperor Akihito, in rare unscripted remarks at a news conference before an overseas goodwill trip.

Deadly train accidents are rare in Japan. Five people were killed and 33 were injured in March 2000, when a Tokyo subway hit a derailed train. An accident killed 42 people in April 1991 in Shigaraki, western Japan.

(© 2005 CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)