Rescuers work at the scene of a derailed passenger train in Balasore district of Odisha state, east India, Friday, June 2, 2023.
Press Trust of India via Associated Press
Two passenger trains derailed in India on Friday, killing at least 50 people and leaving hundreds trapped in more than a dozen damaged carriages, officials said.
About 400 people were taken to hospital after the accident, which happened in eastern India about 220 kilometers (137 miles) southwest of Kolkata, officials said. The cause is under investigation.
Dattatraya Bhausaheb Shinde, chief executive of Balasore district, said at least 50 people were killed.
Nearly 500 police and rescue workers and 75 ambulances and buses responded to the crash, Odisha state top official Pradeep Jena said.
DB Shinde, chief executive of the state’s Balasore district, said rescuers were trying to rescue 200 people feared to be trapped in the wreckage.
Amitabh Sharma, spokesman for the railway ministry, said 10 to 12 carriages of one train derailed, with fragments of some of the damaged carriages falling onto nearby tracks. It was hit by another passenger train coming from the opposite direction.
As many as three carriages of the second train also derailed.
The Press Trust of India news agency said the derailed Coromandel Express was traveling from Howrah, West Bengal, to Chennai, the capital of southern Tamil Nadu.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was saddened by the accident.
“My heart goes out to the bereaved family at this time of grief. May the injured get well soon,” Modi said on Twitter. He said he had spoken to the railway minister and said he was providing “everything possible assistance”.
Despite government efforts to improve rail safety, hundreds of accidents still occur every year on Indian Railways, the world’s largest single-management railway network.
In August 1995, two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people in the worst train accident in Indian history.
Most train accidents are blamed on human error or outdated signaling equipment.
Every day, more than 12 million people cross India on 14,000 trains, traveling on 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) of track.