At least 28 killed after train derails in southern Pakistan
At least 28 people were killed Sunday when an express train derailed in southern Pakistan, the railway minister said, with an emergency declared at local hospitals struggling to deal with dozens of injured.
Accidents and derailments occur frequently on the country’s antiquated railway system, which has nearly 7,500 kilometres (4,600 miles) of track and carries more than 80 million passengers a year, according to AFP.
“This is quite a big accident,” railway minister Khawaja Saad Rafique told reporters.
“According to the information so far, 28 passengers have been killed and many are injured.”
Rafique said at least 1,000 passengers were aboard the Hazara Express when it derailed on a section of track where no faults had been reported.
“There can be two reasons: first that it was a mechanical fault, or the fault was created -- it might be a sabotage. We will investigate it.”
The derailment happened near Sahara railway station close to Nawabshah city in the southern Sindh province.
“Eight coaches have derailed,” Mohsin Syal, a railway official, told local HUM News.
There were chaotic scenes at the Nawabshah Trauma Centre as ambulances and private cars ferried the injured for treatment.
The Hazara Express is a daily passenger train that leaves the port city of Karachi in the south and takes around 33 hours to reach Havelian in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, some 1,600 kilometres north.
In June 2021 two trains collided near Daharki in Sindh, killing at least 65 people and injuring about 150 others.