By DPA
Islamabad : At least 35 people were killed and 80 injured early Wednesday when a passenger train derailed in southern Pakistan and rescue workers were still searching the wreckage for survivors, a state railway official said.
The accident occurred at 2.25 a.m. when 15 wagons on a 17-carriage express train from Karachi bound for Lahore went off the rails near the town of Naushero Feroze in Sindh province, said Mohammed Ali Chachar, deputy controller officer of the Pakistan Railways regional headquarters in Sukur.
A rescue train was dispatched to the crash site, some 230 km north of Karachi, and local police and volunteers were rushing survivors to nearby hospitals and attempting to reach passengers still trapped within the wreckage, he said, adding that authorities feared the death toll would rise.
“There are around 20 people still entangled under a coach,” Chachar said. “We think those 20 are dead.”
However, Abdulhadi Bullo, a district police officer at the crash scene, said only 18 people were confirmed dead and that there were at least four people alive within the mangled carriage.
“I spoke to them myself,” he told DPA, adding that there were also dead bodies inside the carriage.
There were around 700 people aboard the train, which derailed near the Sialabad station, Chachar said.