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Fri, May 25, 2012
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Death toll from India Train Crash Rises to 22: Railways

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Bhopal, India. The death toll from a train crash in northern India Monday has risen to 22, area railways chief Ghanshyam Singh told AFP from the scene.

“So far we have extricated 20 bodies from the train and are tackling one carriage where two bodies are visible,” Singh said from Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh state, about 350 kilometers from the local capital Bhopal.

A railway spokesman in Bhopal, K.K. Dubey, said 50 people were injured of whom 18 had been hospitalized.

The Associated Press, which put the death toll at 21, reported that a freight train on the wrong track slammed into a stationary passenger locomotive at the Bhaderwah railway station amid heavy rain.

The death toll could rise as the debris of two damaged coaches were being cleared, rail official R.S. Yadav said.

The freight train was on a wrong track and hit the passenger train head-on, Yadav told The Associated Press.

The Press Trust of India news agency quoting unnamed officials as saying that the driver of the freight train overshot the red signal to stop, causing the accident. That report could not be immediately confirmed.

Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered an inquiry into the collision.

Accidents are common on India’s sprawling rail network, one of the world’s largest but lacking in modern signaling and communication systems. Most crashes are blamed on poor maintenance and human error.

In July, 63 people were killed after a train smashed into another locomotive at a rail station in West Bengal state.

A passenger train derailed and was hit by a cargo train in May, killing 145 people in West Bengal state. Authorities blamed sabotage by Maoist rebels for that crash.


AFP/AP