BEIJING - China's rail minister has ordered a two-month safety check on railway operations and apologised for Saturday's deadly train crash that killed 39 people, a report on People.com.cn said on Tuesday.

Sheng Guangzu, Minister of Railways, said a range of railway officials were directed to work on front-line operations during the next two months and to learn from the accident, the report quoted a statement on the ministry's website.

He said the safety campaign will extend through the end of September and will focus on high-speed rail and passenger trains, such as implementing maintenance standards and reinforcing checks on power connections to pre-empt outages.

Special attention would also go to prevent accidents caused by flooding and inclement weather, the minister said.

Even before the investigation into the cause of the crash was complete, Beijing on Sunday sacked three middle-level railway officials.

The ministry is still investigating the cause of the accident. Previous reports have said the D301 bullet train rear-ended another express D3115 that lost power following a lightning strike, adding that the power failure knocked out an electronic safety system designed to alert conductors about stalled locomotives on the line.