A cargo train collided with a passenger train in West Bengal, India, on Monday, killing at least 9 people and injuring dozens more.
The accident occurred in the Darjeeling district, a tourist spot in the Himalayan foothills.
The train, called the Kanchanjunga Express, is mainly used by tourists daily travelling from West Bengal state to other cities in the northeast.
The driver of the cargo train ignored a signal and caused the crash, said Sabyasachi De, spokesperson of the Northeast Frontier Railway.
Residents nearby heard the crash and encountered the pile-up when going to investigate, several of them told the ANI news agency.
Three of the nine dead were railway workers, including the driver of the cargo train.
Doctors and ambulances arrived at the scene and people watched as rescuers searched for passengers among the rubble. Nearly 50 people were hospitalized.
Workers have completed their search and are now repairing the tracks, Jaya Varma Sinha, the head of the railway board that runs the network explained.
“The guard’s compartment in the passenger train was badly damaged. ...There were two parcel vans attached ahead of it which reduced the extent of damage to passengers,” Sinha said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his sympathy for the tragic losses and said the Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw would come to the site.
In India, more than 12 million people ride 14,000 trains across the country daily, traveling on 64,000 kilometers of track.
Regardless of government efforts to enhance rail safety, several hundred accidents happen annually, attributed to human error and outdated signaling equipment. Opposition parties have criticized the government for the high number of train accidents.
Last year, at least 280 people died in one of India’s deadliest rail crashes in decades.
Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
