At least 95 people were killed and scores injured after a passenger train derailed in northern India on Sunday, police said, revising an earlier toll of 150.
“The death toll has unfortunately increased and it is 91 now,” Daljit Singh Chawdhary, the additional police director general of Uttar Pradesh state, told AFP.
Rescue workers were searching to see if more passengers were trapped inside the badly mangled coaches of the Patna-Indore express train, Singh said.
The train jumped the tracks near Kanpur industrial city early in the morning when most of the victims were still asleep.
TV footage showed rescue workers trying to cut through severely mangled coaches with suitcases and other luggage strewn around.
India’s railway network, one of the world’s largest, is still the main form of long-distance travel in the vast country, but it is poorly funded and deadly accidents occur relatively frequently.
In 2014, an express train ploughed into a stationary freight train, also in Uttar Pradesh, killing 26 people.
And last year 27 people died after two trains derailed in central Madhya Pradesh state during heavy rains.
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was “anguished beyond words” by the loss of life in the latest accident. (AFP)
