No fewer than 233 people have been confirmed in eastern India after two passenger trains derailed in an accident that also involved a collision with a freight train, according to officials.
The accident on Friday in Odisha state’s Balasore district – India’s deadliest rail incident in more than a decade – also left an estimated 900 people injured, Pradeep Jena, the state’s top civil servant, said on Saturday on Monday.
The death toll is expected to rise, Jena said.
At least 200 ambulances had been called to the scene of the accident and 100 additional doctors, on top of 80 already there, had been mobilised to get the wounded to hospital and care for those still at the scene.
Video footage which was obtained by Africa Today News, New York showed rescuers climbing up one of the mangled trains to find survivors, while passengers called for help and sobbed next to the wreckage.
‘I was there at the site and I can see blood, broken limbs, and people dying around me,’ a witness told the Reuters news agency by phone.
The collision occurred at about 7pm local time (13:30 GMT) on Friday when the Howrah Superfast Express, running from Bengaluru to Howrah, West Bengal, collided with the Coromandel Express, which runs from Kolkata to Chennai. Authorities have provided conflicting accounts on which train derailed first to become entangled with the other and have yet to make any statements about possible causes.
An extensive search-and-rescue operation has been mounted, involving hundreds of fire department personnel, police officers, and sniffer dogs. National Disaster Response Force teams were also at the site.
On Friday, hundreds of young people lined up outside a government hospital in Odisha’s Soro to donate blood.
The cause of the accident was being investigated, said Amitabh Sharma, a spokesperson for the Indian Railways. The details of the accident were not immediately clear, nor was the sequence of events.
There was no official confirmation of the total number of passengers on the trains.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that rescue operations were under way and “all possible assistance” was being given to those affected.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who was rushing to the site of the crash, tweeted: ‘Will take all hands required for the rescue ops.’
Vaishnaw also announced compensation of about one million rupees ($12,000) to the families of those killed, $2,400 for those who had suffered ‘grievous’ injuries, and $600 for people with ‘minor’ injuries.
Several hundred accidents occur every year on India’s railways, with most of them blamed on human error or outdated signalling equipment.
More than 12 million people ride 14,000 trains across India every day, travelling on 64,000km (40,000 miles) of track.