AL AYYAT, Egypt -- A blazing train crammed with holiday travelers sped through the darkness early today with flames engulfing car after car. More than 370 passengers were killed, some of whom leapt to their deaths on the tracks in an effort to escape the flames, according to the New York Times.

The fire is thought to have been ignited by the explosion of a small stove used to make tea or heat food. Some of the 61 injured passengers described the pandemonium on board as the flames and thick smoke raced through the train, which rocked on for some four miles.

"A horrible fire burst open the door like the Devil himself was coming through," said Yasir Fuad, a 28- year old fruit seller who was traveling from Cairo to the city of Asyut. "People were screaming as they got grilled like so many chickens. There was flesh and blood everywhere and I said to myself, `I'm dead.' "

The fire, which is being described as the worst rail disaster in Egypt's history, erupted around 1 a.m., 90 minutes after the train departed Cairo for Luxor in upper Egypt. It consumed seven cars before train engineers realized what was happening and uncoupled the flaming cars from the front nine at this village some 30 miles south of the Egyptian capital, according to various senior officials at the scene.

Passengers said the cars were especially full of children because so many families were headed south for the most important feast day of the Muslim calendar. They described scenes of screaming people on fire running through the train, only to be stopped by a wall of people in the next car. The fire would then roll on, swallowing whole groups of passengers unable to move.

The fruit seller, speaking from a hospital bed here, said he stuck his head out the window to try to figure out how to escape and saw the flames leaping from every window of the cars in front of him. People were hanging from all the doors and windows. He said he waited for the train to slow down, but when it did not he leapt.

Rescue workers carted blackened, twisted bodies off the train all day today, some of them with their faces or other body parts completely melted away. Some of the bodies were curled up underneath the seats, as if trying to find refuge there. The smell of burned flesh hung in the air.

Atef Obeid, the Egyptian prime minister, said on the main evening news that the final death toll was more than 370 people but an exact number had not yet been determined. He said the cause of the fire was under investigation, but since the train had no known mechanical problem the culprit was likely an illegal stove lit by a passenger.

Officials said the accident was the worst single disaster experienced in the 150 years since the founding of the Egyptian Railway Authority.

"There has not been anything like this in the recent or even distant past," Ahmed al-Sherif, the director of the railway authority, said at the scene. "I've worked for the railway for 32 years and never saw or heard of any event this size."

Mr. Sherif estimated the number aboard the train at about 1,200. If his estimate is correct, more than a quarter of those on board perished. Passengers said the train cars were crowded, with all seats taken, people lying in the overhead luggage racks and the aisles overflowing.

"We couldn't move a meter but the flame was moving, eating more people," said Ali Ahmed, a 28-year-old construction worker who was taken to Um Al Misriyiin Hospital in Cairo with burns on 55 percent of his upper body. "We were suffocating from the smoke and the fire caught my head and back. Then I got pushed out of the train."

Another passenger toward the rear said he heard screaming and smelled smoke, but a report somehow passed through his car that a small fire had been brought under control. The electricity had died, leaving the passengers in the dark, when suddenly a roaring wall of smoke and fire came through the door.

"I squeezed out a window and was hanging on to the bars running across it," said Hassan Ahmad, a 31- year-old construction worker. "I saw so many people dying before my eyes. They were hanging out of the doors and windows but they got slammed into the electricity poles as the train kept moving."

Around 40 bodies were scattered along the tracks behind the train, rescue officials said.

Mr. Ahmad said he hung on until his hands could no longer bear the heat of the bars. "Finally I prepared myself to die and said, `There is no God, but God' and then I let go," he recounted from his hospital bed in this farming town, having regained consciousness there with a broken shoulder.

Mr. Sherif said the train had emergency brakes and some fire extinguishers but it is likely that the passengers were unable to find them in their panic. Some passengers disputed that, saying their cars lacked emergency brakes.

Official government statistics indicate that nearly 5,000 people died in railroad related accidents in both 1998 and 1999, the most recent years for which figures are available, but those numbers include incidents like collisions at railroad crossings.

In the past opposition groups like the banned Muslim Brotherhood tried to capitalize on the government's dismal relief efforts for disaster victims by organizing their own, but such activity has since been banned. A cavalcade of black limousines roared through the fields south of Cairo today full of officials visiting the scene.

Friday marks the start of the Id al- Adha, or the "Feast of the Sacrifice," a four-day holiday that celebrates God's providing Abraham with a ram to sacrifice instead of his son.

For the holiday, many Egyptians return to their native villages for a family reunion. The train that burned was made up of second- and third-class cars, on which subsidized tickets for the full 300-mile journey from Cairo to Luxor cost about $5. Foreign tourists and more affluent Egyptians generally travel on the first-class trains because those like the one involved in the accident stop at every village.