Train disaster in Pakistan takes at least 110 lives

A passenger train derailed on Monday, March 3, in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, killing 110 people, according to emergency rescue workers.

"The scene is horrific," said Mohammed Zubair, an ambulance worker with the Edhi Trust, the only privately run emergency service in the country.

Over 150 other people were injured when the brakes failed on the express train near Khaniwal, about 400 km southeast of the capital, said Zubair.

Another ambulance worker, Shamshed Iqbal, said there were still several people trapped inside the overturned railway cars.

"We are having trouble reaching the people," he said.

Some railway cars rolled on top of others and Iqbal said rescue workers were unable to reach people trapped inside the twisted wreckage.

Zubair and Iqbal, both contacted in Khaniwal, said many of the injured were in critical condition.

The 17-car train was en route from Peshawar in Pakistan's northwest frontier province to southern Karachi on the Arabian Sea when the accident occurred early morning.

The train was apparently ordered to stop to make way for a second passenger train that was leaving Khaniwal, the authorities said.

When the operator of the train realized the brakes had failed he drove the train onto a track for runaway trains. It jumped the tracks and the first five cars overturned, they said.

Pakistan's train system is antiquated and there are frequent accidents. People from Khaniwal arrived at the site of the accident and pulled bodies from the overturned rail cars, said eyewitnesses.

They covered them in white shrouds, a common practice in Islamic Pakistan.

Ambulances brought many of the more seriously wounded to Multan, about 40 km away.

UNI