A crowded train sped through a railway station in central India, jumped the tracks and crashed into a signal cabin yesterday, killing at least 18 passengers and injuring 100, authorities said.
The death toll was likely to rise as many passengers remained trapped inside the carriages and 40 of the injured were in a critical condition, they said.
Six coaches of the Bundelkhand Express derailed near Datia town in Madhya Pradesh, about 400km north of the state capital, Bhopal, a police officer said.
"The engine and the first six carriages jumped the rails and overturned," Vagesh Pandey, a railways spokesman, said from the scene of the accident. "Casualty figures will increase as we find more bodies which are believed to be stuck between carriages or in their mangled seats."
Rescue teams, including soldiers were removing passengers from the cars.
The officer said the train had been due to stop at the station but sped through and jumped the tracks in an area where coaches are serviced and cleaned.
"We suspect the brakes of the train failed," he added.
It crashed into the signal cabin beside the tracks and the impact left coaches piled one on top of the other, railway officials said.
"We have people trapped in the bogies. They [rescue teams] are cutting into the bogies and we will see how many people are trapped inside," Datia district administrator Caroline Khongwar told NDTV news channel.
"The train's speed limit was supposed to be 15 [kilometers per hour] but as far as I have been able to find out, it was going at 90 at the station," Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav said in New Delhi.
The train was going from the town of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh to Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh.
India has one of the world's biggest railway networks, running almost 12,000 trains daily carrying more than 13 million people. It registers about 300 accidents a year. Experts say the system, saddled with huge losses because of low fares and a massive workforce, has little money to invest in improving safety and infrastructure.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
RSS