Indian rescue workers search for the victims at the site of a train crash near Sardiha, West Bengal state.
Railway authorities canceled all night trains in an eastern Indian
state Saturday after a passenger express train derailed and was hit by a
cargo train, killing at least 115 people and injuring hundreds. The
government accused Maoist rebels of sabotaging the tracks.
Railway
workers and paramilitary soldiers used cranes to lift and pry apart
train cars to pull out more bodies from the Jnaneswari Express, which
was heading from Calcutta to suburban Mumbai when it derailed early Friday.
"So far we have pulled out 115 bodies. The clearing work will continue until the light fades," said Srikumar Mukherjee, state minister for civil defense, who is overseeing rescue operations at the crash site near the small town of Sardiha, about 90 miles west of Calcutta in West Bengal state.
More than 140 people with injuries were in hospitals in towns near the accident site, officials said.
Railway officials said some bodies were still trapped between
the engines of the two trains, which smashed together when the high
speed passsenger train derailed and was run over by an oncoming cargo
train.
Rescue workers had not yet cut open a badly smashed train car where they expected to find still more bodies, said Surojit Kar Purkayastha, a senior police officer. The work of removing the debris and pulling out the bodies was hampered by swarms of flies and the stench of corpses quickly decomposing in the humid heat, officials said.
Railway authorities said they would not run any trains at night in West Bengal for at least the next four days, when Indian Maoist rebels have called a general strike.
The area is a stronghold of the rebels, known as Naxalites, who have launched repeated and often-audacious attacks in recent months - despite government claims of a crackdown.
Just 11 days ago, the rebels ambushed a bus in central India, killing 31 police officers and civilians. A few weeks before that, 76 soldiers were killed in a rebel ambush - the deadliest attack by the rebels against government forces in the 43-year insurgency. There have been dozens of smaller attack.
The government vowed once again to crush the Naxalites, who Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has often described as India's biggest internal security challenge. But analysts say the government is hobbled by vacillating policies, poorly trained and ill-armed security forces and vast tracts of India where the government has little influence and where poverty has brought considerable support to the Naxalites, who claim to be fighting on behalf of the rural poor.
"So far we have pulled out 115 bodies. The clearing work will continue until the light fades," said Srikumar Mukherjee, state minister for civil defense, who is overseeing rescue operations at the crash site near the small town of Sardiha, about 90 miles west of Calcutta in West Bengal state.
More than 140 people with injuries were in hospitals in towns near the accident site, officials said.
Rescue workers had not yet cut open a badly smashed train car where they expected to find still more bodies, said Surojit Kar Purkayastha, a senior police officer. The work of removing the debris and pulling out the bodies was hampered by swarms of flies and the stench of corpses quickly decomposing in the humid heat, officials said.
Railway authorities said they would not run any trains at night in West Bengal for at least the next four days, when Indian Maoist rebels have called a general strike.
The area is a stronghold of the rebels, known as Naxalites, who have launched repeated and often-audacious attacks in recent months - despite government claims of a crackdown.
Just 11 days ago, the rebels ambushed a bus in central India, killing 31 police officers and civilians. A few weeks before that, 76 soldiers were killed in a rebel ambush - the deadliest attack by the rebels against government forces in the 43-year insurgency. There have been dozens of smaller attack.
The government vowed once again to crush the Naxalites, who Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has often described as India's biggest internal security challenge. But analysts say the government is hobbled by vacillating policies, poorly trained and ill-armed security forces and vast tracts of India where the government has little influence and where poverty has brought considerable support to the Naxalites, who claim to be fighting on behalf of the rural poor.
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