Moto waua watu 47 kwenye mabehewa

At least 47 people perished in a fire aboard a passenger train in southern India early this morning and railway officials expect the death toll to increase as desperate rescue efforts continued.

The accident, on a long-distance train heading from New Delhi to the southern city of Chennai, occurred in the early hours of the morning near the town of Nellore in Andhra Pradesh state 

The accident on the train traveling from New Delhi to Chennai, 1,100 miles to the south occurred near Nellore in Andhra Pradesh province around 4.20 am local time when most of the passengers were asleep. 

One coach was completely gutted and rescuers were struggling to operate gas cutters in searing temperatures inside the metal carriage to gain access to adjoining coaches to try and recover some of the injured. 

Officials said 30 injured passengers many of suffering from critical burn injuries, had been transferred to nearby hospitals. 

They feared the fatalities could rise as the burnt out overcrowded coach had 72 people on board. 
 

One of the survivors told a television news channel that chaos broke out in the compartment when the fire alarm was raised by some people woken up by the billowing smoke.

"Initially, I found the door jammed but luckily it opened and some of us jumped out” he said. Many got injured in the process but were not roasted alive, he stated. 

Railways ministry spokesman Chandralekha Mukherjee in Delhi said the cause of the fire was not known, but speculated that it could have been triggered by a short circuit. 

"Inflammable materials being carried by some passengers could have been responsible for the fire spreading rapidly across the passenger coach” she added. 

Accidents are common on India’s vast rail network that daily operates 9,000 passenger trains that carry over 18 million passengers and remain the mainstay of cross-country commuters across the large country. 

 

More than 1,200 people had died since 2007 in train accidents due largely to negligence by monitoring staff and obsolete signaling equipment. 

Indian Rail, meanwhile, has announced an gratia payment of Rs 500,000 (5800 Pounds) for the families of those who died in this morning’s fire. 

Telegraph