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At least five people were killed when a passenger train and a goods train collided in India on Monday. (Getty Images/Kolidzei)
At
least five people were killed when an express passenger train and a goods train
collided Monday in India’s West Bengal state, derailing three passenger
carriages, police said.
Images
on Indian broadcasters showed tangled wreckage of carriages flipped on their
side, and one thrust high into the air precariously balanced on another.
“At
least five people have died and 25-30 are injured,” senior police officer
Abhishek Gupta told AFP from the site of the crash.
“Three
compartments of the express train were derailed.”
West
Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called the crash “tragic” in
a post on social media.
“Doctors,
ambulances and disaster teams have been rushed to the site for rescue,
recovery, medical assistance,” Banerjee said. “Action on war footing
initiated.”
Banerjee
said the crash took place in the Phansidewa area of Darjeeling district, when
the Kanchenjunga Express train was hit by a goods train.
Railways
minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the “injured are being shifted to the
hospital”.
The
incident is the latest to affect India’s creaking rail network, which carries
millions of passengers daily.
India
has one of the world’s largest rail networks and has seen several disasters
over the years, the worst in 1981 when a train derailed while crossing a bridge
in Bihar state, killing an estimated 800 people.
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In
June last year, a three-train collision killed nearly 300 people in Odisha
state.
In
recent years, India has been investing huge sums of money to upgrade the
network with modern stations and electronic signalling systems.
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