More than 100 killed in rail crash

KARACHI, Pakistan – Three passenger trains crashed in a chain-reaction pileup in a southern Pakistan station early today, killing more than 100 people and injuring hundreds of others, officials said.

Pakistan’s deadliest train wreck in more than a decade left the station yard covered with twisted steel from at least 13 derailed cars. Officials said body parts were strewn about and emergency crews had to cut through metal to reach some victims.

“It is a very gruesome situation,” 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.”

Survivors described being awoken to the horror after being thrown from their beds and seats.

“We were sleeping, and we woke up to a huge bang,” Suraya, a 22-year-old woman who like many Pakistanis goes by just one name, told the Associated Press by telephone. “I fell down to the floor. Then I heard the screams.”

Abdul Wahab Awan, general manager of Pakistan Railways, said officials on the scene had told him more than 100 people were dead and hundreds more injured.

Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, the national head of the Crisis Management Center at the Interior Ministry, ruled out sabotage, saying the crash was “a pure accident.”

The crash started about 4 a.m. when a train sitting in a station near the Sindh province city of Ghotki was hit in the rear by a second train, the Karachi Express. A third, oncoming train then slammed into cars derailed in the first crash, said Abdul Aziz, a senior controller at Pakistan Railways.

Chaudhry Nazir Ahmed, a railroad official in Ghotki, said about 1,000 people were believed to be traveling in the three trains.

Khuda Bakhsh Larak, 50, who was in the Quetta Express and suffered head injuries and a broken leg, said by phone: “Our train was standing still when it was hit from the rear. Our car jumped and flipped on its side.”

Some 30 bodies and more than 100 injured people were taken to the Civil Hospital in the nearby town of Sukkur, said Iqbal Ahmed, a doctor there. He said at least 12 of the injured were in critical condition, and that some had lost limbs or suffered massive head injuries.

Awan said the driver of the Karachi Express misread a signal.

“The crash occurred because of misreading of a signal by the driver of Karachi Express, and it rammed the Quetta Express, which was not moving,” Awan told the Associated Press.