An explosion on a train headed for Pakistan set off a fire that swept through two coaches, killing at least 66 people yesterday in an attack that officials said was aimed at undermining the peace process between India and Pakistan. Dozens more people were injured.
Authorities say two suitcases packed with unexploded crude bombs and bottles of gasoline were found in train cars not hit in the attack, leading them to believe the fire was set off by an identical explosive device.
"This is an act of sabotage," Railway Minister Laloo Prasad told reporters in Patna, India. "This is an attempt to derail the improving relationship between India and Pakistan."
But Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf said leaders on both sides of the border should move forward with efforts to secure peace.
"We will not allow elements which want to sabotage the ongoing peace process and succeed in their nefarious designs," he was quoted as saying by state-run Associated Press of Pakistan.
India's junior home minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said the homemade bombs were not powerful and were intended to start a fire on the train one day before Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri was to arrive in New Delhi for talks on the ongoing peace process.
The fire engulfed two coaches of the Samjhauta Express, one of two train links between rival India and Pakistan. As on most Indian trains, the windows of many cars are barred.
In addition, investigators say at least one of the doors of the two burning carriages was fused shut by the heat of the flames, trapping some passengers inside. There were just more than 600 people on board the train, railway officials said, though it was unclear how many were traveling in the burning coaches.
The blaze broke out just before the train reached the station in the village of Dewana, about 80km north of New Delhi, said Babu Lal, a railway signalman who heard the explosion that apparently sparked the flames.
In seconds, the fire had spread.
"I saw flames leaping out of the windows," said Vinod Kumar Gupta, the assistant manager in the normally placid Dewana station, really just a long platform with a bench for passengers.
The driver of the train, though, had no idea what was going on behind him.
Gupta ran to his booth to pull the signal ordering the train to stop. It was about five minutes, Kumar said, until the Samjhauta Express -- which normally races without stopping through this part of India at about 90kph to 100kph -- halted in a stretch of rural countryside.
People who live near the tracks rushed to the train with buckets of water soon after the fire broke out, and the blaze was eventually extinguished after fire trucks arrived.
At least 30 passengers were hospitalized in the nearby town of Panipat, though they were later moved to larger medical facilities, officials said.
The dead included people from both countries, officials said.
The train was traveling from New Delhi to Atari, the last railroad station before the border with Pakistan. At Atari, passengers change trains in a special station, switching to a Pakistani train that takes them to Lahore.
RSS