A crowded passenger train slammed into a stationary freight train in western India early yesterday, throwing cars off the tracks and killing at least 24 people, a top railway official said.
At least 94 people were injured, 20 of them seriously, in the collision in Samlaya, a village at Gujarat state.
It was not immediately clear what caused the accident, though one official said a signal failure might be to blame.
PHOTO: EPA
Soldiers used metal cutters to extract about 80 passengers trapped in a coach that had climbed over another, as anxious relatives awaited word about their loved ones.
"I was sleeping when I fell from the upper berth. There was a deafening crash. We tried getting out of the coach, but the door was jammed," said passenger Preeti Thakkar, 23, who was in a hospital with an injured collarbone from her fall.
The accident occurred when a passenger train coming from the Hindu pilgrimage city of Varanasi hit the freight train at the Samlaya station, about 36km west of the city of Vadodara. At least five of the cars derailed and fell on their sides.
Federal Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav was heckled by a crowd of about 1,000 and stones were thrown at his car when he visited the main hospital in Vadodara where 72 of the injured were being treated. No one was injured in the confrontation.
Earlier, Yadav visited the crash site and spoke to railway officials but did not speak to the hundreds of passengers and their relatives still at Samlaya station.
"It took the railway minister more than eight hours to reach the site. And when he reached the hospital, the police would not let us talk to him," said Navin Shah, who was searching for his father, a passenger on the train.
Villagers from Samlaya and other nearby communities were the first to reach the train and began pulling people out of the fallen coaches.
Firefighters and soldiers used a hydraulic ladder to reach the top of a coach that had climbed over another and cut through the top with blowtorches to rescue people trapped inside.
Railway officials said that at least 432 passengers were aboard.
"We fear around 80 people are still trapped in one of the coaches," said Gujarat railway minister Narayan Singh Rathore, who was supervising the rescue operation.
Many of the passengers were sleeping when the accident occurred around 3:30am.
"It was terrible. People were screaming in the dark and everyone was pushing to get out of the train," said Thakkar, who was traveling with her parents.
After about two hours, Thakkar said, soldiers were able to cut through the door of the coach and pull out those trapped inside. Thakkar was taken to hospital by rescue workers and said she had no word about her parents.
"I don't know about my parents. I have not seen them since it happened," she said, weeping.
School bullies in Singapore are to face caning under new guidelines, but the education minister on Tuesday said it would be meted out only as a last resort with strict safeguards. Human rights groups regularly criticize Singapore for the use of corporal punishment, which remains part of the school and criminal justice systems, but authorities have defended it as a deterrent to crime and serious misconduct. Caning was discussed in the parliament after legislators asked how it would be used in relation to bullying in schools. The debate followed stricter guidelines on serious student misconduct, including bullying, unveiled by the Singaporean Ministry of
A MESSAGE: Japan’s participation in the Balikatan drills is a clear deterrence signal to China not to attack Taiwan while the US is busy in the Middle East, an analyst said The Japan Self-Defense Forces yesterday fired a Type 88 anti-ship missile during a joint maritime exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces, hitting a decommissioned Philippine Navy ship in waters facing the disputed South China Sea, in drills that underscore Tokyo’s rising willingness to project military power on China’s doorstep. The drill took place as Manila and Tokyo began talks on a potential defense equipment transfer, made possible by Japan’s decision to scrap restrictions on military exports. The discussions include the possible early transfer of Abukuma-class destroyers and TC-90 aircraft to the Philippines, Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. Philippine Secretary of
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
A South Korean judge who last week more than doubled former South Korean first lady Kim Keon-hee’s prison sentence was found dead yesterday, police said. Shin Jong-o was found unconscious at about 1am at the Seoul High Court building, an investigator at the Seocho District Police Station in Seoul said. Shin was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead, he said. “There is no sign of foul play in the death,” the investigator added. Local media reported that Shin had left a suicide note, but the investigator said there was none. On Tuesday last week, Shin presided over 53-year-old Kim’s appeal trial, finding her guilty
RSS