The rail accident that killed nearly 300 people in India was caused by an error in the signaling system, which caused one of the trains to change tracks, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Sunday.
“Who did this and what were the reasons is something that will be known during the investigation,” the minister said in an interview with the New Delhi television channel, quoted by the AP.
The explanation of what caused this train accident on Friday night comes at a time when the authorities are still on the ground cleaning up the remains left by the three trains involved (two of them passenger).
Earlier, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency had already advanced that preliminary investigations indicate that the signal given to the Coromandel Express train to enter the main road had subsequently been withdrawn.
The train entered another line, known as the loop line, colliding with a freight train that was parked there, according to PTI.
The accident took place at 7:20 p.m. local time (1:50 p.m. in Lisbon) on Friday, near a station in the town of Bahanaga, in the state of Odisha, 1,600 kilometers northeast of the capital New Delhi.
Ten to 12 carriages of a train derailed and the wreckage of some of the carriages fell on a nearby track, said Indian Railways spokesman Amitabh Sharma. These remains, added the official, were hit by another passenger train that was traveling in the opposite direction. A third freight train was also involved in the accident.
In addition to the almost 300 deaths already recorded, the disaster left some 900 injured, 56 of whom were in serious condition.
Source: TSF
