At least 58 people killed as holiday train is derailed

AN EXPRESS train crowded with holiday travellers derailed in southern Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 58 people and leaving hundreds of terrified survivors to claw their way out of the wreckage in total darkness.

The train was loaded with an estimated 900 passengers, many of them heading home for the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Dozens of soldiers and police helped tend the injured and carry them away to waiting ambulances, as hundreds of people from the surrounding villages looked on. Army engineers used two cranes and cutting equipment to free the last survivors.

Passenger Mohammed Yusuf sat on a pink blanket next to a pile of discarded shoes and clothes, wailing in grief at the death of his younger brother.

He said his wife, two children and another brother were injured and taken to a hospital, but their conditions were unknown.

The train, which was full but not overcrowded, was speeding from Karachi toward Lahore when about 12 of its 16 cars came off the rails near Mehrabpur, about 250 miles north of Karachi.

It was unclear what caused the accident.

By midmorning, rescuers had brought 58 bodies to three nearby hospitals, said Mumtaz Ali, an official from the Edhi Foundation, Pakistan’s largest privately-run emergency service.

Col Abbas Malik, an army doctor, said about 150 people were injured.

Mohammed Khalid, a railway official who was travelling in one of the rear cars that stayed on the rails, said he suspected a problem with the track — possibly sabotage — caused the accident.