Twisted railcars are piled on top of each other and lines of corpses lie alongside the tracks in eastern India, where the first rays of the sun show the horror of one of the deadliest rail accidents in the country’s history.
In the collision between two passenger trains and a freight train, one of the convoys collided so sharply with the other that the carriages were thrown into the air, spun and fell off the tracks.
Another car was completely flipped over, with the passenger section crushed.
On the floor, among the torn metal remains that were once the carriage’s benches, the passengers’ belongings are scattered: a suitcase, a child’s shoe and piles of clothes.
At least 288 people were killed and more than 850 injured in the crash near Balasore in the eastern state of Odisha on Friday, authorities said, fearing an even worse toll.
During the night, local television broadcast images of the lines of corpses placed next to the tracks, some covered by white sheets, waiting for the rescue teams to remove them on stretchers.
Workers with metal-cutting tools were opening cracks in the sides of the battered carriages in a desperate attempt to gain access to the interior to extricate survivors and trapped victims.
Dressed in orange uniforms and equipped with face masks, first responders, including officers from the National Disaster Response Force, carried those they could extract for medical aid.
rescue efforts
Throughout the night, the death toll grew rapidly as the emergency teams added to the bodies found: from 50 to around a hundred, until reaching almost 300 in the last balance.
Sudhanshu Sarangi, director general of the Odisha state fire brigade, told AFP at the scene that there were “severely injured”.
The sirens of the ambulances that transported the survivors to the hospital constantly resounded in the place.
The number of injured led to buses also being mobilized to take them to medical centers.
From a distance, residents watched the rescue efforts.
In nearby hospitals, there were lines of volunteers to donate blood in the face of a tragedy that exceeded the capabilities of medical services.
Huge crowds gathered at the entrance to the Bhadrak district hospital, shocked as one ambulance after another passed by.
Dazed and bloodied passengers waited for help as doctors scrambled to stem the bleeding and treat the most seriously injured.
2023-06-03 16:05:39
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