More than 260 people were killed and hundreds more injured when a passenger train derailed and struck two other trains in eastern India on Friday, authorities said, a rail disaster whose death toll was exceptionally high even by nation standards. with a long history of deaths. accidents

The accident, in the state of Odisha, shocked India, now the world’s most populous country, and renewed long-standing questions about safety problems in a system that transports more than eight billion passengers a year. The country has invested heavily in the system in recent years, but that has not been enough to overcome decades of neglect.

The accident killed 261 people, according to Indian railway officials. Odisha Chief Secretary Pradeep Jena said another 900 were injured. Authorities said they expected the number of victims to rise.

As dawn broke, rescue dog teams and cutting crews worked to free the injured trapped in the wreckage of the twisted train carriages. Authorities said 115 ambulances had been mobilized and all nearby hospitals were on standby.

The government of the state, home to some 45 million people, declared a day of mourning after India’s worst rail disaster in two decades. Dozens of trains were cancelled. Teams from the Army, the Air Force and the National Disaster Response Force were mobilized to help. And people near the crash site were lining up to donate blood.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised “all possible assistance” for the victims and offered his condolences. A senior official confirmed that Modi was likely to visit the disaster site on Saturday.

“In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families”, Mr. Modi wrote on Twitter. “May the injured recover soon.”

The accident occurred when several carriages of one train derailed and collided with another in Balasore district, the train’s operator, South Eastern Railway, said in a statement. Local authorities said the entanglement eventually involved a third train carrying freight.

Some of the passengers were returning to the eastern state of West Bengal from information technology or nursing jobs in southern India, according to The Indian Express newspaper. reported. Others were laborers.

Ashok Samal, a merchant, told The Hindustan Times who was ending his day near the railway in his village of Bahanaga on Friday when he heard a deafening noise, ran onto the main track between Kolkata and Chennai and saw a pile of wrecked train carriages.

“There was loud screaming and blood everywhere,” he told the newspaper, adding that he saw people trapped under the carriages and people screaming for help.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the railways minister, told reporters on Saturday that he had ordered an investigation to determine the cause of the accident.

“Our immediate focus is rescue and relief,” he said from the disaster site. “We will know more after the investigation.”

India’s railway system, one of the largest in the world, was first developed in the 19th century by the British colonial authorities. Today, more than 40,000 miles of track—enough to go around the earth one and a half—spread like capillaries over a nation roughly twice the size of Alaska that stretches from the Himalayas to the rainforests.

In 2005, at least two dozen people were killed when a crowded passenger train crashed into a parked freight train in the western state of Gujarat. Six years later, dozens died when a mail train derailed in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, east of New Delhi.

In 2016, more than 100 passengers died in another derailment in Uttar Pradesh. Two years later, dozens of people were hit by a speeding train in the northwestern state of Punjab while celebrating a Hindu festival with fireworks.

The deadliest accident since Friday’s crash was a 1999 accident in West Bengal that killed around 285 people when two trains collided head-on.

In 2021 alone, there were more than 16,000 train-related deaths, according to the country’s National Criminal Records Office. That number includes cases in which people were struck while walking on the tracks or fell from moving trains.

Passenger safety has come under scrutiny in India in recent years.

In 2012, a committee appointed to review the safety of the rail network cited “a bleak picture of inadequate performance largely due to poor infrastructure and resources.” He recommended a series of urgent measures, including improving the tracks, repairing bridges, removing highway level crossings and replacing old carriages with ones that better protect passengers in the event of an accident.

Since then, the Modi administration has spent tens of billions of dollars to renovate and modernize old trains and tracks.

On Saturday, Modi was scheduled to inaugurate, via video conference, India’s 19th Vande Bharat Express train, a new electric model made in the country. It features technology designed to help reduce the risk of collisions, and will run between the western city of Mumbai and the southern state of Goa.

Mr. Modi’s office said friday that the train “would provide the people of the region with the means to travel quickly and comfortably.”

But in a system weakened by years of neglect, deadly problems remain. And instead of inaugurating a new train on Saturday, Modi was attending to a national emergency.

Indian news reports said that as news of the Odisha accident spread, desperate relatives went to Howrah station near Calcutta, where one of the trains was heading, to find out about the status of their loved ones.

In Howrah, a man, Sapan Chowdhury, told The Indian Express that he was relieved to learn that his 23-year-old daughter was alive, although she had been injured by glass fragments.

Others were not so lucky.

kim victoria contributed reporting.