NEW DELHI: Rescuers battled to pull survivors Sunday from the wreckage of a train crash which killed at least 27 passengers in southern India, the latest in a series of disasters on the country's creaking rail network.
Eight coaches and the engine of the Jagdalpur-Bhubaneswar express derailed at around 11:00 pm (1730 GMT) on Saturday night near Kuneru railway station in the remote district of Vizianagram in Andhra Pradesh state.
"We can confirm the death toll has gone up to 27 and 50 people have been injured," J. P. Mishra, a spokesman for East Coast Railways, told AFP.
"There is a possibility that the toll may go up. Rescue efforts are on."
The accident comes only two months after nearly 150 people were killed in a similar disaster, highlighting the malaise on a network which is one of the largest in the world.
Mishra said that the injured have been shifted to two nearby hospitals.
National railway spokesman Anil Saxena said government officials as well as emergency workers worked through the night in a bid to locate survivors.
Television footage showed a line of carriages lying on their sides as rescuers in neon orange safety vests and hard hats tried to hoist passengers through the windows while locals gathered to peer at the rescue effort.
Other images showed injured victims on hospital beds and stretchers, with their limbs swathed in bandages.
Mishra could not give an immediate cause for the derailment, but said the case was under investigation and would not rule out any angle including sabotage.
He told the NDTV news network there were some 600 people in the carriages that derailed and most of them had been shifted to "the unaffected portion of the train" in time.
He added that 10 buses have been arranged for the passengers who escaped injury to travel to Bhubaneswar, capital of neighbouring Odisha state.
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