115 die in train crash in India

The crashed train

The death toll following the derailment of a train in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state has reached at least 115, with more than 150 injured, police say.

Fourteen carriages of the Indore-Patna Express derailed just after 03:00 local time on Sunday (21:30 GMT Saturday) near the city of Kanpur.

Rescuers are still trying to reach the injured and recover the dead from the twisted carriages.

The cause of the crash near the village of Pukhrayan is not yet known.

However, the Times of India quoted sources as saying a fracture in the track could have been to blame.

The death toll has been rising steadily all day and is expected to increase further.

Krishna Keshav, who was travelling on the train, told the BBC: “We woke with a jolt at around 3am. Several coaches were derailed, everybody was in shock. I saw several bodies and injured people.”

Most of the victims were located in two carriages near the engine which overturned and were badly damaged.

By late Sunday afternoon, rescue workers were still using heavy machinery to try to reach survivors.

Senior railway official Pratap Rai told Reuters: “We are using every tactic to save lives but it’s very difficult to cut the metal carriages.”

The BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder, in Delhi, says rescuers brought out two children alive on Sunday morning, raising cheers from onlookers.

One passenger whose carriage did not derail told the Associated Press the train was going at normal speed. It stopped suddenly, said Satish Kumar, then restarted shortly before the crash.

Passenger Ruby Gupta, 20, was travelling to Azamagarh to be married on 1 December.

She told the Times of India that most of the people travelling with her had been found but that her father was still missing.

She said: “I cannot find my father and I have been looking everywhere for him. I have a fractured arm and my sisters have also sustained injuries.”

Many anxious relatives gathered at the station in Indore, where the train began its journey, holding pictures of loved ones, the Times said.

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