17 killed as India train derails

Four carriages of a passenger train derailed in India, killing at least 17 passengers and injuring 25 others, officials said today.

The death toll could rise further because some injured passengers remained in critical condition and rescuers continued searching for victims in one of the carriages, which derailed on Sunday night, local police chief Narendra Waghmale said.

The carriages went off the rails when the train hit a boulder from a landslide caused by monsoon rains near Vaibhyavadi, a village 300 miles south of Bombay.

“The boulder fell just when the train was approaching a tunnel. It happened concurrently and the impact dislodged the coaches,” rail spokesman Nandu Telang said.

The dead included 10 men, four women and three children. The injured were being treated at a hospital, where at least 15 were in serious condition, the spokesman said.

The train was on its way to Bombay from Karavar in Maharashtra state.

Telang said rescuers were using hand-propelled rail carts to reach the accident site, and were hampered by rains and poor communications links to the area, which is not accessible by road.

The accident happened on a 460-mile stretch of rail that forms the only link between Bombay and the tourist destinations of Goa and Mangalore. All trains along that route have been diverted until tomorrow.

Train derailments are common in India, which has one of the largest railroad networks in the world, carrying more than 14 million passengers and one million metric tons of cargo each day.

Earlier this month, three passengers were killed and 25 injured in two separate train derailments.