Train crash death toll rises in India

The death toll from a train derailment in northern India rose to at least 60 today as more bodies were pulled out of the mangled coaches.

The senior army official in charge of rescue operations at the accident site saids volunteers and soldiers had recovered 60 bodies from 12 coaches of the Kalka Mail, which went off the tracks yesterday.

But Col Amarjit Dhillon said many more bodies were trapped under the twisted coaches and soldiers were using gas cutters to slice through the metal.

Rescue workers working through the night rescued many of the more than 100 injured in the accident near the town of Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh state.

Meanwhile officials said a second train derailment last night, hundreds of miles to the north east, appeared to have been caused by a remote-controlled bomb.

Rescuers were working to reach the site in a rural area of Assam state, injuring at least 100. The two railway incidents did not appear to be related.

In the first crash, the Kalka Mail train was on its way to Kalka, in the foothills of the Himalayas, from Howrah, a station near Kolkata in eastern India, when 12 coaches and the engine left the tracks at Malwan station, senior railway official AK Jain said.

The cause of the derailment was not immediately clear but it appeared that the driver applied the emergency brakes, Mr Jain said.

Hours later, the second train derailed in the north-eastern state of Assam, injuring at least 100 people, said SK Roy, a local magistrate.

Police suspect a remote control-triggered bomb caused four coaches of the Gauhati-Puri Express to be thrown off the tracks in the town of Rangiya, about 30 miles west of the state’s capital, Gauhati.

S Hajong, a local railways spokesman, said two of the four coaches plunged into a pond.

No-one has claimed responsibility for the attack so far. More than 30 groups in north-eastern India have been fighting for decades for independence or wide autonomy in the region, about 1,000 miles east of New Delhi.

It was the third train accident in India in the last four days. A train hit a bus at an unmanned railway crossing last Thursday, killing 35 people.

In Fatehpur, the accident site was a pile of twisted metal. At least one coach flew above the roof of another ahead of it and was dangling precariously, television footage showed. Another coach was thrown away from the rest of the train.

Medical teams rushed to the area, about 75 miles south east of Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state.

Army helicopters were ferrying the most seriously injured victims to hospitals and 30 army engineers had joined the rescue efforts.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh expressed “deep sorrow and shock” at the loss of lives.

Express trains normally carry about 1,000 people and travel at speeds of 60-80mph.

India’s railroad network is one of the largest in the world and carries about 14 million passengers a day. Accidents are common, with most blamed on poor maintenance and human error.