60 die in Pakistan train collisions
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-13 10:54

Three passenger trains crashed in southern Pakistan early Wednesday, killing at least 60 people and injuring hundreds more, officials said. State television reported more than 100 were feared dead.

The accident occurred at about 4 a.m. when a train sitting in a station near Ghotki, in southern Sindh province, was rear-ended by a second train, said Abdul Aziz, a senior controller at Pakistan Railways.

The collision caused several cars to derail and spill over onto another track, where they were struck by a third train, causing further derailment, he said.

"It is a very gruesome situation," local police chief Agha Mohammed Tahir told The Associated Press. "Rescue workers have started to pull the dead and injured out. There were many people inside and there are a lot of casualties."

He said 60 bodies had been recovered, and hundreds of people were injured.

Tahir said body parts were strewn across the site amid piles of twisted steel and other debris. Rescuers had to cut through metal to get to some of the injured, he said.

"They are being pulled out every minute," he said.

He said at least 13 train cars derailed, and that the injured were being taken in ambulances and cars to area hospitals.

Aziz, the railways official, also said he expected the toll of dead and injured to be high.

"We fear that there could be many casualties," he said.

Ghotki is about 370 miles northeast of Karachi, in remote Sindh province. Aziz said rescue teams had been dispatched, but that it could take some time for them to reach the site in force.

A second railway official, Sajjad Ahmed, said the train in the station was the Quetta Express, which was taking passengers from the eastern city of Lahore to the southwestern city of Quetta when it developed a technical problem.

Technicians were working on the train when it was hit by the Karachi Express, a night-coach passenger train from Lahore to the southern port city of Karachi.

The impact pushed cars onto an adjacent track, and they in turn were hit by the oncoming Tezgam Express, which was bringing people from Karachi north to Rawalpindi, near the capital.

Pakistan's railways are antiquated, and dozens of people have been killed in train accidents in recent years.

On March 5, five people were killed and 25 injured when a passenger train derailed in eastern Punjab province. And on September 20, 2003, a train plowed into a packed bus in central Pakistan, killing at least 27 people and injuring six others.

Accidents are often blamed on faulty equipment or human error.

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