Train wreck in India kills at least six, injures more than two dozen

At least six people died and two dozen were injured after two passenger trains collided Sunday in southeastern India, authorities said.

Three rail cars derailed on a passenger train that was stopped because of a broken overhead cable after an incoming express train barreled into it in the southeastern district of Vizianagaram, in Andhra Pradesh state, Reuters reported. The coaches that were hit contained 90 people, 27 of whom were injured, an official from a neighboring district told Reuters.

Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, Andhra Pradesh’s chief minister, ordered government agencies to coordinate disaster-relief measures as multiple rescue teams and residents extracted injured passengers from the wreckage. Ambulances were being rushed to the scene from neighboring districts.

India’s extensive rail system covers 40,000 miles of track and carries 14,000 trains daily across the country, transporting more than 12 million people a day. Train accidents are common on the country’s network and are normally attributed to human error or signal malfunctions.

In June the country suffered one of the worst rail accidents in its history, when nearly 300 people were killed and almost a thousand injured. In that case a passenger train hit a freight train in eastern India and was thrown onto another track, where it was hit by a third passenger train. That crash was blamed on a signal error.

With News Wire Services