At least 261 people have died in India's worst rail accident in over two decades, officials said on Saturday, after a passenger train went off the tracks and hit another one in the east of the country.
One train in Friday's accident also hit a freight train parked nearby in the district of Balasore in Odisha state, leaving a tangled mess of smashed rail cars and injuring 650.
Video footage showed derailed train coaches and damaged tracks, with rescue teams searching the mangled carriages to pull the survivors out and rush them to hospital.Prime Minister Narendra Modi was flying to the scene, ANI news agency reported, citing sources.Another witness involved in rescue operations said the screams and wails of the injured and the relatives of those killed were disturbing. "It was horrific and heart-wrenching," he said.
Odisha state Chief Secretary Pradeep Jena said on Twitter that more than 200 ambulances had been called to the scene and 100 doctors had been mobilised to join 80 already there. Video footage from Friday showed rescuers climbing up one of the mangled trains to find survivors, while passengers called for help and sobbed next to the wreckage.
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