No fewer than 288 people have died with 900 injured after three trains collided in India.
The horrific incident occurred on late Friday evening, June 2, 2023, in India’s eastern Odisha state.
According to officials, one passenger train derailed and its coaches fell on to the adjacent track where they were struck by an incoming train on Friday evening. A freight train was stationary.
Officials said several carriages from the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express derailed at about 7:00 pm 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.