|
Indian train crash kills 27, injures 60
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-12-14 20:46
MUKERIAN, India - Two passenger trains collided in northern India on Tuesday,
killing at least 27 people and injuring more than 60, officials said.
Several coaches went off the tracks when the Jammu Tawi express crashed
head-on into a local train near Mukerian town in Punjab state at about noon
(1:30 a.m. EST), they said.
 |
| Indian army soldiers search for bodies in a damaged coach after a
head on collision in the village of Mansar, 120 Km (75 miles) northeast of
the northern Indian city of Amritsar December 14,
2004.[Reuters] |
"It sounded like a huge bomb
explosion," a woman on the express train told Star News TV.
Officials said they had yet to determine the cause of the latest accident
on India's railway network, which is one of the world's largest, but has a poor
safety record.
At least five cars were badly damaged and were lying in a heap of mangled
metal and wheels, a Reuters photographer at the site said. One car had been
split in two.
One engine had climbed on top of another and was pointing skywards while
some coaches were upside down on the track, which runs through green paddy
fields.
Railway officials said they had recovered 27 bodies and did not expect
the toll to climb much more. About 60 people were injured and not 250 as police
had reported earlier, they said.
Villagers worked with their bare hands to remove passengers from the
wreckage before rescue teams arrived with metal cutters.
Indian army
soldiers search for bodies in a damaged coach after a collision in the
village of Mansar, 120 Km (75 miles) northeast of the northern Indian city
of Amritsar December 14, 2004. [Reuters]
| "There was chaos, people were screaming. Someone had broken a leg, others
were lying near the derailed coaches with blood running down their heads," area
resident Shyam Babbar told Reuters by phone.
"I saw smashed bodies in the damaged coaches. There was a woman and a
small child next to her. Both were dead," he said.
Clothes and luggage were strewn around the site where hundreds of
villagers gathered to watch the rescue. Television pictures showed several
people climbing on top of the twisted carriages, apparently trying to break
their way in.
The express train was carrying some Hindu pilgrims home from Vaishno
Devi, a revered shrine in the mountains of Jammu and Kashmir state.
The Indian rail network operates nearly 14,000 trains a day, carrying
more than 13 million passengers, but has about 300 accidents a year.
Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav told parliament he would visit the
site to determine the cause of the accident. "The guilty will be punished after
the reason is known," he said.
The rail system is saddled with huge losses because of its rock-bottom
fares and a bloated workforce, leaving little for investment in infrastructure
and safety.
A report on railway safety last year blamed "employee
error" for 65 percent of accidents over the previous decade. A collision between
two trains killed 220 people in Punjab in 1998.
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Today's
Top News |
|
|
|
Top World
News |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
