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.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS