“There could be two reasons for this accident, a mechanical problem or sabotage,” Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique told reporters, announcing that an investigation would be opened. The Hazara Express accident occurred near the Sahara station, near the town of Nawabshah, in the southern province of Sindh.
“Eight carriages derailed,” railway official Mohsin Syal told private broadcaster HUM News. Earlier, provincial government spokesman Sharjeel Memon had reported 28 dead and more than 50 injured.
Scenes of chaos followed the crash at Nawabshah Trauma Hospital, where ambulances and private cars were pouring in carrying the injured. A man jumped out of an ambulance clutching a child, his clothes soaked in blood, while a woman carried on a stretcher moaned in pain.
“We don’t know what happened, we were just sitting inside,” testified a dazed train passenger.
A twisted and deformed chassis
At the scene of the accident, dozens of cars, tractors, rickshaws and motorcycles were parked on a road alongside the railway. Footage released by local media showed dozens of people at the site, some smashing train windows to help passengers out of twisted carriages.
Volunteers were wading through a canal separating the road from the railway line to help the injured. Some cars were still upright, but pulled off the tracks, others were lying on their sides, the steel of the frame twisted and deformed.
Passengers remained trapped on the train, a police officer on the scene, Younis Chandio, told Geo News television. Ijaz Shah, a provincial railway official, told AFP that a train had been sent to the crash site with relief supplies.
Frequent rail accidents in Pakistan
The Hazara Express provides a daily connection between the major port city of Karachi, in southern Pakistan, and Havelian, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, 1,600 kilometers further north. The journey takes 33 hours.
Rail accidents are frequent in Pakistan, whose 7,500 kilometer network is used each year by more than 80 million passengers. The country inherited thousands of kilometers of tracks and trains from the colonial era, under the British Empire, whose maintenance has been neglected over the years.
In June 2021, at least 65 people were killed and 150 injured in the collision of two trains, including one that had just derailed, in the south of the country. In October 2019, at least 75 passengers were burned alive in a fire aboard the Tezgam express and in 2005 the collision of two trains in Ghotki killed more than a hundred people.