At least 280 bodies were recovered between Friday evening and this morning, according to the Associated Press (AP) news agency, the head of the Odisha fire service.
Sudhanshu Sarangi further noted that more than 800 injured passengers, many of them in critical condition, had been transferred to various hospitals.
An official from Odisha state, PK Jena, had already raised that at least 900 people were injured in the accident.
Rescue teams continue to try to access the destroyed cars, looking for trapped passengers. According to Sarangi, the chance of finding survivors is small.
“Around 10 p.m. local [de sexta-feira; 16:30 em Lisboa], we managed to save the survivors. After that it was a matter of collecting the bodies,” he said.
“This is very, very tragic. I have never seen anything like it in my career,” he added.
The accident, according to reports from international news agencies, occurred at 7:20 p.m. local time (1:50 p.m. in Lisbon), near a railway station in Bahanaga town, 1,000 miles northeast of the capital New Delhi.
Images broadcast by television stations show completely destroyed carriages and piles of metal at the scene of the tragedy.
Ten to 12 carriages of a train derailed and the wreckage of some of the carriages fell onto a nearby track, Indian Railways spokesman Amitabh Sharma said. This wreckage, the official added, was in turn hit by another passenger train, traveling in the opposite direction.
The Press Trust of India news agency reported that a third freight train was involved in the accident, but Indian authorities have not yet confirmed the information.
Authorities said 1,200 rescuers worked through the night, supported by 115 ambulances, 50 buses and 45 mobile medical units.
One of the survivors told journalists that he was asleep when the disaster happened and that when he awoke he was on top of a dozen other passengers.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on social networks that he was “upset” by the tragedy.
Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw assured that “the air force” has been “mobilised”.
India has had other rail disasters in the past, although safety has improved significantly in recent years thanks to massive new investment and technology upgrades.
This country has the fourth largest rail network, after the United States, Russia and China, with some 68,000 kilometers, more than 21,000 trains and 7,349 stations, transporting 23 million passengers every day.
India’s deadliest railway accident occurred on June 6, 1981 when seven carriages of a train crossing a bridge fell into a river in the state of Bihar (east), killing between 800 and 1,000.
Friday’s accident is the worst on Indian railways since a train plowed into worshipers gathering at a Hindu festival in the northern state of Punjab on October 19, 2018, killing 60 people and injuring 90.
Since the turn of the century, thirteen rail accidents, including at least three caused by attacks, have each claimed more than 50 lives.
Source: DN
