August 3, 1999
Web posted at: 5:20 a.m. EDT (0920 GMT)

GAISAL, India -- Rescue workers pulled apart a mountain of twisted metal today to get to hundreds of bodies believed trapped inside the wreckage of two trains that collided head-on in northeastern India. At least 226 bodies have been removed.

More than 200 more were thought to be inside three badly smashed train cars, but authorities feared there might not be any more survivors.

The stench of rotting, charred flesh rose from a field where the railroad cars lay. No cries for help were heard from within the wreckage, where arms and legs hung limply from crumpled carriages.

The only sounds were the sobs of victims' families and the noise of rescuers tearing apart the tangled heap with cranes.

Passengers were asleep when the trains collided before dawn Monday, sending coaches spiraling over each other and hurtling travelers about their compartments.

"I heard an explosion and then the coach rose, as if it was an aircraft taking off, and then came down with a thud," S. Chettry, a cook in the pantry car, told The Indian Express newspaper.

Railway officials said one of the trains was on the wrong track for unknown reasons. Railway Minister Nitish Kumar said the accident was caused by human error, and announced today that he would resign.

District Magistrate Prashant, a senior local administrator who uses one name, said only 22 of the recovered bodies could be recognized since most were so badly mangled.

The collision of the Brahmaputra Mail train from Gauhati and the Awadh-Assam Express from New Delhi occurred in Gaisal Station, a small-town rail stop in West Bengal state, about 310 miles north of Calcutta.

Both trains were traveling at about 60 mph and the impact sparked a fire that engulfed some coaches, burning to death some of the 2,500 passengers aboard the two trains, officials at railway headquarters in Gauhati said.

Working by the dim light of gas lamps and generator-charged electric bulbs, officials quietly laid out the dead on a grassy clearing Monday night and draped them with white shrouds.

The bodies were then loaded onto trucks and taken to the nearby town of Siliguri to be handed over to relatives.

Even experienced medical officers were shaken.

"We are used to seeing dead bodies daily, but I've never seen anything like this," said Dr. C. P. Singh on the private STAR television.

Relatives swarmed local hospitals, which were overflowing with nearly 300 injured passengers.

Two huge cranes arrived at the accident site early today and began separating four railroad cars. Ten other carriages that were thrown off the track were to be lugged away.

It was one of the deadliest train accidents in India's history. In 1995, 358 people were killed in a train wreck near New Delhi and in 1981, nearly 800 died when a cyclone blew a train off the tracks into a river in the northern state of Bihar.

Many of the victims of Monday's collision were army soldiers traveling to or from Assam, a remote state in northeastern India wracked by separatist insurgency and tribal warfare.

Authorities resumed train services in the area today after clearing one of the tracks.

Kumar, the railway chief, told Reuters in the eastern city of Patna that "I thought that I should resign, own moral responsibility."

"There is no politics in it. I told the prime minister that I am shocked beyond words and I should not remain in office."

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee told reporters he had advised Kumar not to take any hasty step, but to discuss the matter on his return to New Delhi in the evening.

Vajpayee called the accident "a great tragedy" and ordered an official inquiry. President K.R. Narayanan said the crash "highlights the crying need to improve rail safety measures."

In Washington, President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton offered condolences. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also mourned the deaths, spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York.

India has the world's largest railway network under one management with more than 14,000 trains carrying 12 million people daily. More than 400 accidents take place each year.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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