HUNDREDS DIE IN TRAIN CRASH

MORE THAN 500 people were feared dead and 1,000 injured today after two trains collided, sending blazing carriages careering from the track.

At first it was believed terrorist bombs had caused the carnage in eastern India, but rescue workers trying to cut survivors free from the burning wreckage discovered at least one of the trains appeared to be carrying military arms and explosives.

The crash, thought to be the world's third worst rail disaster, happened at 1.30am local time in the province of West Bengal as the Brahmaputra mail train from Gauhati passed through Gaisal station where the Delhi-bound Awadh-Assam Express was standing at a platform. Urgent investigations were launched to discover how they both came to be on the same line.

Rescue teams, consisting mainly of local army units using gas cutters, have removed more than 200 bodies but many more are trapped inside the carriages. Two coaches at the bottom of the heap of wreckage have still to be reached.

The force of impact, together with a series of explosions, blasted the engine of the express train into the air and smashed 14 carriages on both trains.

A spokesman for Indian Railways in New Delhi said: "It is not an explosion or a bomb blast. It is a collision of two trains." He confirmed the military use of the mail train and said most of the victims on board were soldiers, border security force and Central Reserve Police Force personnel.

The worst rail disaster of all time also occurred in India. More than 800 people died when a cyclone blew their train off the tracks into a river in the northern state of Bihar in

June 1981. Train accidents are common in India, which has the world's biggest rail network. Today rescue operations were being hampered by the region's remoteness and monsoon rains which had turned Gaisal station into a quagmire.

The local PTI news agency said its correspondent counted some 200 bodies on the station platform and quoted border security force officials as saying that more than 200 bodies had been extricated from the wreckage of the trains.

"Rescue workers are facing a tough time pulling out bodies trapped inside the carriages," the Indian Railways spokesman said. "They have evacuated more than 100 injured passengers to the railway and government hospitals in Siliguri and New Jalpaiguri," he added, referring to two nearby towns which lie close to the hill station of Darjeeling.

Movement of tea, petroleum products and minerals from the region were expected to be hit by the accident, which compounded problems caused by the bombing of a rail track in the area by Assamese separatist guerrillas on Saturday.

At least 575 died when gas from a leaking pipeline exploded as two trains passed in the former Soviet Union in 1989.

Additional reporting by Colin Adamson

Copyright 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.