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For the latest casualy list check the official Konkan Railways site at http://www.konkanrailway.com/website/bulliten/2620index.htm Headline: Eighteen killed as Indian train derails Source: Reuters UK Wed 16 June, 2004 10:01 at http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=530408§ion=news By Jayashree Lengade BOMBAY (Reuters) - At least 18 people have been killed and 50 injured after an Indian train derailed while crossing a bridge in the west of the country, officials say. Ten coaches and the engine of the Matsyagandha Express jumped the rails after the engine struck a boulder that had rolled on to the track as the train began to cross the bridge close to the hilly Konkan coast on Wednesday. Officials said rescue workers struggled to remove bodies from two coaches that hung from the bridge after the accident that happened in pouring rain about 100 miles south of Bombay, India's commercial hub. "It was a difficult task to remove the bodies. Some were hanging precariously out of the coaches. But we managed to get them out," Vaishali Patange, a senior railway official, told Reuters. Medical and rescue teams rushed injured passengers in pelting monsoon rain to a hospital near the crash site while railway engineers tried to move the damaged coaches from the tracks for other trains. Anxious family members of passengers crowded a railway station in Bombay to scan the list of passengers on the train. Officials said the train derailed at around 6:10 a.m. (2:40 a.m. British time) and was headed for Bombay from the southern coastal city of Mangalore. India has one of the world's largest railway networks but it has a poor safety record. Around 14,000 trains run daily carrying more than 13 million passengers, but accidents total around 300 a year. Last June 51 people were killed on the Konkan coastal railway corridor -- built six years ago across inhospitable hilly terrain -- when a passenger train derailed at the entrance of a tunnel after it hit boulders that fell on the track due to a landslide. Last July, 15 people were killed and 21 injured when a passenger train plunged off a bridge on to a road in southern Andhra Pradesh state. ================================= Forwarded by Eddie Fernandes
