More than 260 dead after Odisha accident

At least 261 people have been killed and 1,000 are injured in a crash involving three trains in India’s eastern Odisha state, officials say.

One passenger train derailed on to the adjacent track and were struck by an incoming train on Friday, also hitting a nearby stationary freight train.

A massive rescue operation was launched, with hundreds of emergency services searching the wreckage.

It is India’s worst train crash this century and the cause is not yet clear.

Officials said several carriages from the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express derailed at about 19:00 (13:30 GMT) in Balasore district, hit a stationary goods train and several of its coaches ended up on the opposite track.

Another train – the Howrah Superfast Express travelling from Yesvantpur to Howrah – then hit the overturned carriages.

“The force with which the trains collided has resulted in several coaches being crushed and mangled,” Atul Karwal, chief of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) told news agency ANI.

It was the third deadliest crash in the history of Indian railways, he said.

More than 200 ambulances and hundreds of doctors, nurses and rescue personnel were sent to the scene, the state’s chief secretary Pradeep Jena said.

Sudhanshu Sarangi, director general of Odisha Fire Services, had earlier said 288 had died.

The rescue operation recovering people from the wreckage has finished and work to restore the site of the crash begun, India’s South Eastern Railway company said on Saturday.

All trapped and injured passengers have been rescued. It is not clear how serious the injuries of those taken to local hospitals were.

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw is at the site of the accident and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit the injured in hospital later on Saturday.

Survivors and eyewitnesses have described chaotic scenes and the heroic efforts of people from nearby villages to save passengers trapped by the wreckage.

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Mukesh Pandit, who was trapped for half an hour before being rescued by locals, told the BBC he heard a “thunderous sound” shortly before the carriage overturned.

“Four passengers who were travelling from my village have survived, but a lot of people are injured or still missing. A lot of people died in the coach I was travelling in,” he added.

“I got hurt in my hand and also the back of my neck. When I came out, I saw someone had lost their hand, someone had lost their leg, while someone’s face was distorted,” the survivor told India’s ANI news agency.

India’s deadly train crashes

• June 1981: Nearly 800 people died when seven of the nine coaches of an overcrowded train fell into a river during a cyclone

• August 1995: At least 350 people are killed when two trains collide 200km (125 miles) from Delhi

• August 1999: Two trains collide near Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) killing at least 285 people

• October 2005: 77 people are killed when a train derails in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh

• November 2016: Nearly 150 people are killed and an equal number are injured when 14 carriages of the Indore-Patna Express train derail near the city of Kanpur

Residents of the neighbouring villages were among the first to reach the site of the accident and start the rescue operation.

India has one of the largest train networks in the world with millions of passengers using it daily, but a lot of the railway infrastructure needs improving.

Trains can get very packed at this time of year, with a growing number of people travelling during school holidays.

Both passenger trains involved in the crash were full and had many more people on the waiting list, according to passenger lists on the Indian rail ministry website reviewed by the BBC.

India’s worst train disaster was in 1981, when an overcrowded passenger train was blown off the tracks and into a river during a cyclone in Bihar state, killing at least 800 people.

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