Eighteen die as train jumps rails

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 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 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.