A U.N. aid agency official says 15 people who were injured in last week's North Korea train blast died while being treated in a hospital in the border city of Shinuiju.

The World Food Program spokesman in Pyongyang, Gerald Bourke, blamed the deaths on a lack of medical supplies and the hospital's inability to cope with the overflowing number of patients.

He said that those being treated at the People's Hospital in Sinuiju had horrible wounds, caused either by burns or by debris and glass thrown towards them at great velocity.

It was not clear whether the 15 were included in the 160-or-so death toll reported by international aid workers earlier on Monday.