UPDATED. Video footage shows derailed train coaches and damaged tracks, with rescue teams searching the mangled carriages to pull the survivors out and rush them to hospital.
BHUBANESWAR, India – At least 261 people have died in India’s worst rail accident in over two decades, officials said on Saturday, June 3, after a passenger train went off the tracks and hit another one in the east of the country.
The death toll has reached 261, said KS Anand, chief public relations officer of South Eastern Railway. The AFP news agency had earlier quoted an official as saying 288 people had died. A witness involved in rescue operations said the screams and wails of the injured and the relatives of those killed were chilling. “It was horrific and heart-wrenching,” he said.
Early on Saturday morning, Reuters video footage showed police officials moving bodies covered in white cloths off the railway tracks.“I was asleep,” an unidentified male survivor told NDTV news. “I was woken up by the noise of the train derailing. Suddenly I saw 10-15 people dead. I managed to come out of the coach, and then I saw a lot of dismembered bodies.”
After an extensive search-and-rescue involving hundreds of fire department personnel, police officers, and National Disaster Response Force teams as well as sniffer dogs – authorities have ended the rescue operation. Workers have started clearing debris to restore rail traffic. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik described the crash as “extremely tragic.” The state has declared Saturday a day of mourning as a mark of respect to the victims.
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