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Two passenger trains crashed – train crash in India: cause of the accident apparently known – News

4 June 2023

After the devastating train accident with over 270 dead and up to 1000 injured in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, the cause of the accident has apparently been found.
India’s railway minister spoke of an “error in the electronic signal box” and announced a comprehensive investigation report.
The accident happened on Friday evening (local time) 200 kilometers southwest of Kolkata. Two passenger trains and one freight train were involved.

After one of the worst train accidents in India, more than a thousand people are constantly busy with the evacuation work. This was announced by the Indian Ministry of Railways on Twitter.

The chief executive of the state of Odisha revised the number of fatalities slightly downwards to the agency ANI on Sunday. According to this, 275 people have been recovered dead so far. On Saturday there was still talk of 288 victims. 88 people have been identified so far.

Legend:

The salvage work continues into the night on Sunday.

IMAGO/Xinhua

Drone footage on local television on Sunday also showed excavators at work clearing the route – and with many wrecks and broken tracks, they show the staggering extent of the disaster. According to rescue workers on site, no more survivors are expected in the wrecks.

The goal is to complete the clearance work by Wednesday, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told the Indian news agency ANI. At the same time, relatives tried to identify victims in various mortuaries, some of whom were very disfigured, as reported by the “Times of India”.

Authorities announce investigation

“An investigation will be made into who did this and what caused it,” Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in an interview with New Delhi Television.

An aerial picture shows the extent of the destruction.

In the accident in the Indian state of Odisha, two passenger trains and a freight train apparently collided after a derailment. How exactly that happened is still unclear. The accident happened on Friday evening around 7 p.m. local time (3 p.m. CEST), in a rural area of the Balasore district, a good 200 kilometers southwest of Kolkata (formerly: Calcutta).

Politicians and heads of state expressed their condolences around the world. Including the President of the United States Joe Biden. “Jill and I are heartbroken after the tragic news of the fatal train accident in India,” said Biden on Saturday (local time), according to a statement from the White House in Washington, also on behalf of the First Lady. The President and his wife’s thoughts are with the people of India.

Also UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres According to his spokesman Stéphane Dujarric, he was “deeply saddened” after the accident. The Secretary-General offered condolences to the families of the victims as well as to the people of India and their government, a statement from New York said.

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, also expressed his sympathy. He tweeted to Modi and the victims’ families: “We share your pain of loss.”

Russia’s President Wladimir Putin wrote in a telegram published by the Kremlin: “We share the grief of those who lost their loved ones in this disaster and hope for a speedy recovery of all those injured.”

Pope Francis assured “his spiritual closeness to all those affected by this tragedy”. His thoughts are with the grieving relatives and the injured. He asked for the “divine gifts of courage and bravery” for the rescue workers.

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted Modi: “Europe mourns with you”. And also the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as well as Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier expressed their sympathy.

India known for train accidents

India’s ailing railway system with old trains and tracks in need of an overhaul is notorious for frequent accidents. But such high numbers of victims are extremely rare even in the huge country with 1.4 billion inhabitants.

Man in front of train wrecks.

Shortly after the accident, the prime minister’s office announced compensation for the victims and their families.

Those responsible will be severely punished.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself announced the consequences. “Those responsible will be severely punished,” he said, according to local media such as the “Hindustan Times” when visiting the scene of the accident and injured people in a hospital. Instructions were given to consider “every angle” during the investigation.

More than 100 people have died in serious train accidents in India in recent decades, including the Kanpur 2016, Valigonda 2005, Rafiganj 2002, Gaisal 1999 and Khanna 1998 accidents.

The Seenigama accident in Sri Lanka, where the tsunami wave hit a packed express train on December 26, 2004 and killed around 1,800 people, is considered the greatest railway disaster in history.

One of the worst accidents in rail traffic is the accident in Eschede in Lower Saxony, which killed 101 people. Exactly 25 years ago, on June 3, 1998, several ICE carriages crashed into a road bridge at a speed of 200 km/h after a wheel tire broke.