AMRITSAR, India: Angry relatives staged a protest Saturday on the tracks where a speeding train ploughed into crowds watching fireworks, killing about 60 people in the latest disaster to bedevil India's railway network.
The Jalandhar-Amritsar express was hurtling at 90 kilometers (55 miles) per hour when it hit scores of people who had gathered on the tracks late Friday to get a view of a firework-packed effigy of the demon king Ravana for a Hindu festival.
Many of the victims were dismembered beyond recognition and police said it would take several days to complete the identification of the dead.
Some desperate families went from hospital to hospital in the northern city of Amritsar on Saturday looking for missing relatives, while the first funerals of some victims were held.
Hardeep Singh, chief medical officer for Amritsar, told AFP 59 deaths had been confirmed and 90 people had been injured, with seven in critical condition.
Singh said only 25 bodies had been identified so far. Amritsar's main hospital did not have enough space in its morgue, and some corpses were laid outside.
The disaster led to new demands for safety reforms to India's accident-plagued railway system, which records thousands of deaths each year.
Sporadic protests broke out near the accident site, with scores of protesters calling for action against the local authorities and the train driver who was questioned by police on Saturday.
But federal junior minister for Indian Railways ruled out any punitive action against his staff, including the driver, saying the national carrier was not at fault.
"There was no lapse on our part and no action against the driver will be initiated," Manoj Sinha told reporters in New Delhi, adding "trains travel in speed only".
Police moved the protesters off the tracks and brought in reinforcements to control a crowd of hundreds that gathered around the scene of the disaster.
Investigators said victims did not hear the train because the drone of the locomotive was drowned out by firecrackers. Another train had narrowly missed the crowds two minutes earlier, officials said.
According to media reports, the driver told police he did not see the revellers until the last second because he had come around a bend in the dark into the firework smoke.
As the blame game spread, police said they had given permission for the display for the annual Dussehra festival fireworks but that organisers did not have approval from the city, health department and fire brigade.
According to media reports the organisers, members of the ruling Congress party, had gone into hiding.
Federal Railway minister Piyush Goyal returned early from a trip to the United States to go to Amritsar on Saturday.
Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh called off a trip to Israel and rushed to visit the injured in hospital, where he ordered a magisterial inquiry into the incident.
India's huge railway network is notorious for accidents, including scores who die while crossing the tracks illegally or falling off over-capacity trains.
A 2012 government report described the loss of 15,000 passengers to rail accidents every year in India as a "massacre". The government has pledged $137 billion over five years to modernise the crumbling network.
In 1981, seven carriages from a train fell into a river as it crossed a bridge in the eastern state of Bihar, killing between 800 and 1,000 people.
But nearly every month there are accidents involving trains that derail or hit vehicles on crossings. In April, 13 children were killed when a train hit their school bus. In November 2016, the Patna-Indore express derailed in Uttar Pradesh state in the middle of the night, killing 139 people.
India train disaster families protest amid anger over safety
India train disaster families protest amid anger over safety
- Many bodies were badly dismembered and police said identification of the victims could take several days
- The funerals of some victims were held Saturday and the accident brought widespread demands for tough action by authorities
Pakistan says it struck militant hideouts along Afghan border after surge in deadly attacks
- Pakistan has seen a surge in militant violence in recent years, much of it blamed on the TTP and outlawed Baloch separatist groups
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said early Sunday it carried out strikes along the border with Afghanistan, targeting hideouts of Pakistani militants it blames for recent attacks inside the country.
Islamabad did not say in precisely which areas the strikes were carried out or provide other details. There was no immediate comment from Kabul, and reports on social media suggested the strikes were carried out inside Afghanistan.
In comments before dawn Sunday, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar wrote on X that the military conducted what he described as “intelligence-based, selective operations” against seven camps belonging to the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, and its affiliates. He said an affiliate of the Daesh group was also targeted in the border region.
In October, Pakistan also conducted strikes deep inside Afghanistan to target militant hideouts.
Tarar said Pakistan “has always strived to maintain peace and stability in the region,” but added that the safety and security of Pakistani citizens remained a top priority.
The latest development came days after a suicide bomber, backed by gunmen, rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into the wall of a security post in Bajaur district in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan. The blast caused part of the compound to collapse, killing 11 soldiers and a child, and authorities later said the attacker was an Afghan national.
Hours before the latest border strikes, another suicide bomber targeted a security convoy in the nearby Bannu district in the northwest, killing two soldiers, including a lieutenant colonel. After Saturday’s violence, Pakistan’s military had warned that it would not “exercise any restraint” and that operations against those responsible would continue “irrespective of their location,” language that suggested rising tensions between Islamabad and Kabul.
Tarar said Pakistan had “conclusive evidence” that the recent attacks , including a suicide bombing that targeted a Shiite mosque in Islamabad and killed 31 worshippers earlier this month, were carried out by militants acting on the “behest of their Afghanistan-based leadership and handlers.”
He said Pakistan had repeatedly urged Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to take verifiable steps to prevent militant groups from using Afghan territory to launch attacks in Pakistan, but alleged that no substantive action had been taken.
He said Pakistan urges the international community to press Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities to uphold their commitments under the Doha agreement not to allow their soil to be used against other countries.
Pakistan has seen a surge in militant violence in recent years, much of it blamed on the TTP and outlawed Baloch separatist groups. The TTP is separate from but closely allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, who returned to power in 2021. Islamabad accuses the TTP of operating from inside Afghanistan, a charge both the group and Kabul deny.
Relations between the neighboring countries have remained tense since October, when deadly border clashes killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants. The violence followed explosions in Kabul that Afghan officials blamed on Pakistan.
A Qatar-mediated ceasefire has largely held, but talks in Istanbul failed to produce a formal agreement, and relations remain strained.
