At least 30 people were killed and several others injured as a train derailed near the Sarhari Railway Station in Nawabshah on Sunday, Aaj News reported.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah confirmed the death toll.

While speaking to the media at People’s Medical College Hospital in Benazirabad, the chief minister said that the injured could be shifted to Karachi if needed and directed the local administration and health officials to expedite relief and rescue efforts.

Earlier, Railways and Aviation Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique told the media that the accident occurred at 1:18 pm, and around 1,000 passengers were travelling in the Hazara Express.

“More rescue teams have been dispatched to the site.”

Emergency has been imposed in the hospitals of Nawabshah and Sukkur, the minister told. “First there will be relief work, then investigation.”

Sabotage or mechanical fault behind derailment’

Saad Rafique further said that an act of sabotage could be among the reasons for the derailment of multiple Hazara Express coaches, which killed more than a dozen people.

“There could be two possible reasons for the accident. Either it is a mechanical fault in the line or a fault was developed. It could be an act of sabotage or mechanical fault,” he told reporters at a press conference in Lahore.

He, however, said the federal government railways inspector would decide how the accident occurred.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Railways Sukkur Divisional Commercial Officer (DCO) Mohsin Siyal said an unknown number of bogies had derailed in the incident.

“Some people are reporting that five bogies had derailed, some are saying eight have derailed and some are saying 10 have derailed,” he said.

“The Hazara Express was travelling from Karachi to Abbottabad; eight coaches have derailed,” Mohsin Syal, a railway official, told local media.

Ijaz Shah, a provincial railway official, told AFP that several passengers were killed and that a relief train had been dispatched to the site.

Two trains narrowly escape collision

Images posted to local media show dozens of people at the site, with some smashing windows to help passengers clamber out of the twisted carriages and at least one coach overturned.

Accidents and derailments occur frequently on Pakistan’s antiquated railway system.

The Hazara Express accident occurred only a day after the Allama Iqbal Express escaped a major disaster when two of its bogies derailed near Padidan railway station on Saturday.

In June 2021, two trains collided near Daharki in Sindh, killing at least 65 people and injuring about 150 others.

In that accident, an express derailed onto the opposite track, and a second passenger train crashed into the wreckage roughly a minute later.

At least 75 passengers were burnt to death in a fire aboard the Tezgam express train in October 2019, while a two-train collision at Ghotki killed more than 100 people in 2005.