Friday's incidnt is India’s worst train crash this century

At least 288 people are now known to have been killed and 900 injured after three trains collided in India’s eastern state of Odisha on Friday in one of the worst train crashes in the country’s recent history.

Rescuers Saturday waded through piles of debris and wreckage to pull out bodies and free hundreds of other people trapped in the incident involving two passenger trains and a goods train in the city of Balasore, according to Odisha’s chief secretary Pradeep Jena.

The death toll is expected to rise as teams carry out a colossal rescue operation, Jena told reporters, adding that more than 200 ambulances have been sent to the scene in Balasore.

About 500 units of blood were collected overnight with 900 units currently in stock, he tweeted. “This will help in treating the accident victims. I’m personally indebted and grateful to all the volunteers who’ve donated blood for a noble cause.”

The cause of the catastrophic crash has yet to be determined, Jena told reporters, emphasising that the current focus is on ongoing rescue operations.

“We are only working (at) sending additional doctors, ambulances, buses, so all those things we are doing so we have not thought of asking what happened, how it happened,” he said.

The deadly incident occurred after one passenger train collided with coaches of an already derailed passenger train that had tossed into the opposite track, Indian authorities said. Both trains then derailed, with officials noting a third train carrying freight was also involved.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his condolences Friday, saying: “Distressed by the train accident in Odisha. In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover soon. Rescue ops are underway at the site of the mishap and all possible assistance is being given to those affected.”

The Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology has announced that the families of the dead will receive $12,136, with lesser amounts available to the injured.

A day of mourning has been announced in the state.

It is India’s worst train crash this century. Friday’s crash death toll has already surpassed that of an infamous crash in 2016 – one of the deadliest in recent years – when over 140 people died in a derailment in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

India's worst train disaster was in 1981, when an overcrowded passenger train was blown off the tracks and into a river during a cyclone in Bihar state, killing at least 800 people.