The press secretary of the South Eastern Railway company K.S. Anand said that according to the preliminary data of the investigation, this accident is one of the worst railway accidents in history. Indiamay be due to a malfunction of the alarm system.

After the collision and derailment of the wagons”people were crying, calling for help,” Arjun Das, one of the survivors, told Indian television.. Passengers were “thrown out of their beds, the wounded were everywhere, in carriages and along the railroad tracks,” he added, saying he wanted to “forget” what he saw.

The journalists who were there they saw overturned wagons and rescuers working tirelessly to get the survivors out. There were many corpses lying along the tracks, covered with white sheets.

The accident occurred on Friday evening near Balasore, which is 200 kilometers from Bhubaneswar, the capital of the state of Odisha in eastern India.

At first, An express train from Bangalore to Calcutta derailed and fell onto a nearby track.. A few minutes later, another train, the Coromandel Express, connected Calcutta with Chennai, he collided with a derailed train and some of his carriages derailed and collided with a commercial train.who stood motionless beside him.

Hiranmai Rath, a student whose house is very close to the tracks, rushed to help. A few hours later, he saw, in his words, “more death and destruction than he could have imagined.” “Consider seeing or finding a human corpse, an arm, a severed leg.“, he said.

Anubav Das, 27, was on the last carriage of the second train. He told AFP that he heard “shrill, piercing sounds from afar” and “saw mutilated bodies and a man with a severed arm assisted by his wounded son.”

Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi promised that those responsible would be brought to justice. Modi went to the scene of the accident and then met the wounded at the hospital.

200 ambulances, buses and the army have been mobilized to transport the injured, Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnow said.

OUR Pope Francis expressed “deep sorrow”. for the devastation and condolences to the families of the victims. “My thoughts are with the families of the victims,” French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted.

Formerly India experienced many railway tragedies, however, in recent years, network security has improved significantly due to investment and advancement in technology. The country’s worst rail accident occurred on June 6, 1981, when seven carriages of a train crossing the bridge fell into the Bagmati River, killing between 800 and 1,000 people.

Since 2000, there have been 13 accidents, of which at least three were due to terrorist attacks, each of which killed more than 50 people.

With information from APE-MPE and AFP

⇒ News today

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