A cargo train collided with a passenger train in India's eastern state of West Bengal on Monday, killing at least nine people and wounding dozens more, officials said.
Television networks broadcast footage of one train ramming into the end of another, with one compartment soaring high in the air. Doctors and ambulances headed to the accident site in the Darjeeling district, a tourist destination tucked in the Himalayan foothills, shortly after the crash. Scores of people gathered as rescuers sifted through the rubble.
According to Sabyasachi De, spokesperson for the Northeast Frontier Railway, three of the nine people killed were railway staff. Nearly fifty people were hospitalized.
The cargo train driver, who was among those killed, ignored a signal and caused the crash, according to De. According to him, the accident caused four compartments at the back of the passenger train to derail, with the majority of the cars carrying freight and one serving as a passenger coach.
According to De, rescuers have completed their search for any remaining passengers, and workers are now focusing on fixing the damaged rails and removing the stranded coaches. The remaining coaches, carrying around 1,300 people, continued to their initial destination of Kolkata, the state capital, he added.
Every day, more than 12 million people ride 14,000 trains across India, covering 64,000 kilometers (40,000 miles) of track. Despite government attempts to enhance rail safety, several hundred accidents occur each year, with the majority attributed to human error or antiquated signaling equipment.
Last year, a train catastrophe in eastern India killed over 280 people, making it one of the country's worst accidents in decades.