19 August, 2017
At least 10 people have been killed and 150 people injured after a train derailed in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh, a government official said on Saturday.
"We have mobilised all our resources to provide the best relief and rescue operations at this time", Saxena told TV channels.
"We are trying to take out the trapped people from the coaches", senior police officer Jitender Kumar told AFP.
"Ten people have died and dozens have been injured".
There are fears some passengers are caught inside mangled coaches.
Another official said metal cutters and cranes were being used to reach inside the damaged coaches as the federal government rushed dozens of rescuers with specialized equipment and sniffers to the spot.
Railway police and local volunteers helped pull passengers out of the upturned coaches of the Kalinga-Utkal Express, which connects the Hindu holy city of Haridwar with the temple town of Puri, in the eastern state of Orissa. "Strict action will be taken against any lapse", the minister tweeted.
India's railway network is still the main form of long-distance travel in the vast country, but it is poorly funded and deadly accidents often occur. The accident comes less than a year after the Indore-Patna Express derailed near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh in November last year, leaving over 100 dead.
State official Arvind Kumar said two of the coaches had telescoped into one another, while four others toppled onto their sides.
A 2012 government report said nearly 15,000 people were killed every year on India's railways and described the loss of life as an annual "massacre".
The Indian government in 2015 announced an investment of over 137 billion USA dollars over a period of five years to boost railways and modernise it on new lines.
