The accident happened near the Sahara railway station in the town of Nawabshah in the southern province of Sindh. At least 28 people were killed in a train derailment in southern Pakistan on Sunday, Pakistani Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique said. A first assessment reported in the morning of at least 15 victims.
“The Hazara Express was traveling from Karachi to Abbottabad, eight cars derailed”a railway official, Mohsin Syal, told the private channel HUM News in the morning. “It’s a really serious accident”, had specified for his part the Minister of Railways. The cause of the accident is still unknown.
According to the minister, at least 1,000 people were on board the Hazara Express when it derailed. Footage released by local media shows dozens of people at the site, some smashing train windows to help passengers out of twisted cars, at least one of which had overturned.
Rail accidents are common in Pakistan, which inherited thousands of miles of track and trains from colonial times under the British Empire. In June 2021, the derailment of a train near the town of Daharki claimed more than sixty victims. In October 2019, at least seventy-five people were killed in the fire of their train, which was traveling from Karachi to Rawalpindi. In 2016, two convoys carrying hundreds of passengers collided in Karachi, killing 21 people.