Jul 19, 2010
57 killed in train collision
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Two express passenger trains collided in eastern India in the early hours of Monday morning, killing at least 50 people. --PHOTO: AP
<!-- story content : start --> KOLKATA (India) - A SPEEDING express rammed into the back of another passenger train in eastern India early Monday morning, killing 57 people and trapping others in the wreckage, officials said. The express hit the other train as it stood at a station in Birbhum district, around 200 km north of Kolkata, the state capital of West Bengal. The force of the impact lifted one of the stationary train's rear carriages off the tracks and left it lodged at an angle over a passenger bridge at the station.
Bodies and badly injured travellers were being pulled from the crumpled mass of steel by emergency services and members of a huge crowd of onlookers which had gathered around the site of the accident. 'The death toll has crossed 50. We are still struggling to pull out some bodies from the coach,' senior police officer Humayun Kabir told AFP by telephone from the scene. There was no immediate report of what may have caused the accident.
Most of the dead were in the rear 'unreserved' carriages, which are usually tightly packed. 'The people who have lost their lives were travelling in unreserved coaches. We do not have their names and any vital information about them to inform their relatives,' Sunil Banerjee, a local rail traffic manager told AFP. 'Relief trains have been rushed from Kolkata,' he said. Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee and other senior officials were also on their way to the site.
The accident came less than two months after a train collision blamed on Maoist saboteurs killed nearly 150 people in West Bengal. The state-run railway system - still the main form of long-distance travel in India despite fierce competition from new private airlines - carries 18.5 million people daily. There are 300 accidents on the railways every year, and past crashes have left hundreds dead. -- AFP
