At least 31 die when Indian trains collide

Two passenger trains collided head-on in northern India today, killing at least 31 people and injuring 50.

Officials blamed the accident on communications problems between stations.

Welders cut through twisted metal in search of bodies and survivors amid the two trains’ crushed hulks, while soldiers carried out the dead.

Fifty injured had been found, 16 of them in serious condition, said Dharam Singh, the top railway official in the area of the accident – between the cities of Pathankot and Jalandhar in India’s northern Punjab province, about 180 miles from New Delhi.

“We do not expect any more casualties at the site. We are now concentrating on the seriously injured at the hospital,” said railway spokesman Devender Sandhu.

The accident highlighted blind spots in India’s huge train network, which is often criticised for poor safety standards.

A “communications snag” between stationmasters at two stations apparently caused the crash, with an express train and a local train allowed to travel toward each other on the same track, Singh said.

“We will order an inquiry. Only then will we come to know who was at fault,” Singh said in a telephone interview.

Most of the dead were from the local train, which apparently could not stop in time because it was negotiating a curve. It slammed into an express train travelling from Jammu, the winter capital of Kashmir, to Ahmadabad in western Gujarat state. The local train was travelling between the cities of Jalandhar and Pathankot.

It was India’s second major train accident this year. In June, 14 people were killed when a high-speed train derailed after hitting boulders on the track in western Maharashtra state.

Minor derailments and other accidents are common in India’s state-run system, which operates 7,000 passenger trains a day.