Indian authorities raised the death toll to 261 this Saturday in the worst rail accident in two decades in the Asian country, which has also left 900 injured when three trains collided on Friday in the eastern state of Odisha.
“According to the information received so far, there are 261 dead,” the south-eastern division of the Indian Railways said in a statement.
The new balance of victims comes after the Indian authorities concluded this morning the search and rescue work in the Balasore district, where two passenger trains and a third freight train were involved yesterday in a multiple crash.
Hundreds of disaster management forces were mobilized thus ending a chaotic operation that lasted all night until this morning in Balasore district.
The accident occurred when a first passenger train traveling between the cities of Shalimar, in Calcutta, and Chennai, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, derailed, after which a second train traveling from Yeswanthpur, in Bangalore to Howrah in Calcutta collided with it.
A third freight train was also involved, although the authorities have launched an investigation and have not yet clarified the reason for the event.
Authorities announced a day of mourning in the state and compensation of more than $12,000 for the dead, about $2,500 for the seriously injured and $606 for those with minor injuries, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced he will visit this Saturday the area of the accident.
This is India’s worst rail accident in more than two decades, after the August 1999 crash of two trains in the northeastern state of West Bengal killed 288 people. Some 800 people died in 1981 when a train derailed while crossing a bridge and plunged into a river in the northern state of Bihar.
The Indian railway network is, with more than 42,000 miles of route, the fourth by length in the world, behind the United States, Russia and China, it has some 21,650 trains and 7,349 stations throughout the country, and transports about 23 daily million passengers.
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