KOLKATA – A goods train smashed into the rear of a passenger train in India’s West Bengal state on June 17, killing at least 15 people and injuring about 30, a police official said.
In media images of the pile-up, containers from the goods train were seen strewn on the tracks. One carriage was seen tilted upwards in the accident.
At least 15 bodies have been pulled from the mangled carriages, Mr Abhishek Roy, a senior police official in the eastern state’s district of Darjeeling, the site of the accident, told Reuters.
The dead included the driver of the freight train and a guard on the passenger train, Ms Jaya Varma Sinha, head of the railway board that runs the countrywide network, told reporters.
Rescue teams from the police and India’s national disaster response force were working with doctors and residents of the area to clear debris from the derailed carriages, Mr Roy said.
Rescuers were tackling the aftermath on a “war footing”, Indian Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in a post on X.
Iron rods and ropes were used to free one carriage of the passenger train that ended up resting on the roof of the freight train due to the impact of the crash.
Rescue work has been completed, Ms Sinha said, while the authorities were working to restore traffic, although the damage had been less extensive than initially feared.
The goods train hit the Kanchanjunga Express, which was on its way to Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, from the north-eastern state of Tripura, causing three carriages of the passenger train to go off the rails.
The accident happened after the driver of the freight train apparently disregarded a signal and hit the rear end of the express train, Ms Sinha added.
It was not immediately clear how many passengers were on board at the time.
“The guard’s compartment in the passenger train was badly damaged,” she added. “There were two parcel vans attached ahead of it which reduced the extent of (injury) to passengers.”
Nearby residents heard a loud crash and saw the pile-up when they went to see what caused the noise, several told the ANI news agency, in which Reuters has a minority stake.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences over the loss of life in the accident and said Mr Vaishnaw was on his way to the site.
Chances of a large number of casualties were reduced, since two of the three derailed carriages of the express train were laden with goods, said a railway official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
About 288 people died a year ago in India’s worst rail crash in more than two decades in the neighbouring state of Odisha, caused by a signal failure.
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