DEADLY TRAIN ACCIDENT IN INDIA KILLS OVER 90, HUNDREDS INJURED ! (PHOTOS)

A passenger train derailed in northern India Sunday, killing at least 91 travellers most of whom were sleeping when the fatal accident occurred, police said.

Rescue workers rushed to the scene near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh state where the Patna-Indore express train derailed in the early hours of the morning.

“A lot of teams are currently there including local police, doctors and members of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF). The rescue operations are on,” Daljit Singh Chawdhary, the additional police director general, told reporters.

All local hospitals had been placed on alert and around 30 ambulances had been deployed to transport the injured.

TV footage showed rescue workers trying to cut through severely mangled coaches with suitcases and other luggage strewn around.

Witnesses spoke of being woken up by a huge bang and being thrown around.

“We woke up to a great thud this morning. It was pitch dark and the noise was deafening,” a passenger told reporters as he waited with his family at the accident site.

“I am lucky to be alive and safe. But it was a near death experience for us.”

Suresh Prabhu, India’s Railways Minister, said in a tweet the government would investigate what caused the derailment and promised the strictest possible action against those found guilty.

India’s railway network, one of the world’s largest, is still the main form of long-distance travel in the vast country, but it is poorly funded and deadly accidents occur relatively frequently.

In 2014, an express train ploughed into a stationary freight train, also in Uttar Pradesh, killing 26 people.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that he was “anguished beyond words” by the loss of life.

Modi’s government has pledged to invest $137 billion over five years to modernise its crumbling railways, making them safer, faster and more efficient.

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Fourteen carriages of the train, traveling between the northeastern city of Patna and the central city of Indore, were thrown off track in Pukhrayan, 65 kilometers south of Kanpur city, according to railway officials.

TV footage showed badly mangled blue carriages, with crowds of people and police on top of the wreckage searching for survivors. One carriage was almost lying on its side, and appeared to have been completely torn apart.

Rescue officials with yellow helmets were working their way through the crowds, carrying victims from the mangled wreckage as teams struggled to remove the derailed wagons from the tracks, one of the main transportation routes for goods and passengers in northern India.

“Still many more passengers are trapped,” Anil Saxena, a senior railway official in New Delhi told Reuters.

The packed train, operated by the Indian government, derailed in the early hours of Sunday when more than 500 passengers were sleeping, survivors said.

“Suddenly I could feel that the carriage was overturning. I immediately

held the metal rod near the bathroom door,” said Faizal Khan who was traveling with his wife and two children, all of whom survived the accident.

Two senior police officials in Kanpur said their teams have been able to pull out 60 bodies from the badly damaged carriages.

“Our aim is to rush all the injured to the hospital in the next two hours and we are seeking help from private hospitals,” said additional director general Daljeet Singh Choudhary.

Buses are being pressed into service to help passengers complete their journey, Singh said.

MORE CASUALTIES EXPECTED

The death count is likely to rise as rescuers look through the wreckage, according to witnesses and officials.

“I can see bodies lying near the tracks, everyone is in a state of shock. There is no water or food for us,” said Rajdeep Tanwar, a survivor.

Suresh Prabhu, India’s Railways Minister, said in a tweet the government would immediately investigate the causes of the derailment and promised accountability with the “strictest possible action.”

Prabhu said the government would offer 350,000 rupees ($5,133.43) to families of the dead, as well as 50,000 rupees in case of grievous injury and 25,000 in case of simple injury.

India’s creaking railway system is the world’s fourth largest, ferrying more than 20 million people each day, but it has a poor safety record, with thousands of people dying in accidents every year, including in frequent train derailments.

Derailments and accidents have been a frequent occurrence, including an incident in Uttar Pradesh – India’s most populous state – in March last year that killed 39 people. Heavy rains in the eastern state of Andhra Pradesh in 2005 caused a train to derail, with some carriages plunging into a river, killing more than 100.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who started out selling tea outside a train station, has promised to modernize India’s railways and build high-speed engines befitting Asia’s third-largest economy.