A train in Pakistan packed with holiday travelers slipped off the rails overnight and crashed, killing at least 58 people and leaving more than 150 injured, officials said yesterday.
Pakistan Railways ruled out sabotage and said a piece of track appeared to have broken in the extreme cold, sending the 17-carriage train hurtling over an embankment outside Mehrabpur. Several carriages were crushed or torn to shreds.
"We hope there are no bodies left inside," said Brigadier Mazhar Jamil, who led the army rescue team that worked through the night and morning, treating the wounded and picking through the wreckage for the dead.
"We cut the coaches open and looked in every nook and corner," he said. "The rescue operation is over."
The Karachi Express was on its way to Lahore, filled with hundreds of people getting ready to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, when the train derailed outside Mehrabpur, 200km northeast of Karachi.
The carriages then slid down an embankment 4m high. Some simply tipped over, but others were ripped open.
Rescuers brought 58 bodies to three nearby hospitals, said Mumtaz Ali, an official from the Edhi Foundation, Pakistan's largest privately run emergency service.
Colonel Abbas Malik, an army doctor, said about 150 people were injured.
Jamil said countless lives were saved by local residents, who fought off the cold and hauled the wounded away in the darkness before rescue teams arrived, taking them to hospital on rickshaws, scooters and donkey carts.
For many survivors, there was tragic news.
Rescue teams found a badly injured four-year-old girl, weeping in pain amid the debris. Her parents were missing and presumed dead, said Abdul Hameed of the Edhi Welfare Trust, a major national aid group.
"We have tried to find her relatives," Hameed said. "But nobody has come forward."
Several of the train carriages were completely destroyed.
Twisted pieces of metal were bent toward the sky. Broken-off wheels, some of them badly rusted, lay scattered amid piles of passenger belongings -- furniture, schoolbooks, even a refrigerator.
"We were almost asleep when we heard something -- a big bang. Then I felt I was flying through the air and the carriage was tumbling to the ground," said Shahid Khan, a 24-year-old salesman.
"We were grappling in the darkness," a shaken Khan said. "Somehow we managed to make it out."
Jamil said the military found no signs of foul play, and Asad Saeed, operations manager of Pakistan Railways, said there was apparently a metal failure on the track.
"Initial reports said a welded joint on the track broke, due to contraction in the extreme cold," he said. "It sometimes happens in winter."
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