A tragic accident occurred in India's West Bengal state on Monday when a freight train collided with a stationary passenger train.
The impact resulted in at least 15 fatalities and dozens of injuries, according to police reports. Railway authorities attributed the incident to driver error.
Media outlets shared images of the aftermath, depicting a chaotic scene with containers from the goods train scattered around and one carriage nearly standing upright. This accident comes just over a year after a similar incident caused by a signaling error, which remains one of India's worst rail disasters.
Abhishek Roy, a senior police official in Darjeeling district where the accident occurred, confirmed that fifteen bodies have been recovered from the severely damaged train carriages.
Fifty-four people were injured, and rescue teams from the police and national disaster response force were working to clear debris from the derailed carriages, Roy added.
The goods train hit the Kanchanjunga Express traveling to Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, from the northeastern state of Tripura, driving three carriages of the passenger train off the rails.
It was not immediately clear how many passengers were on board at the time.
Rescuers used iron rods and ropes to free one carriage of the passenger train that had been swept upwards to lodge on the roof of the freight train by the impact of the collision.
The dead included the driver of the freight train and a guard on the passenger train, Jaya Varma Sinha, the head of the railway board that runs the countrywide network, told reporters.
The accident happened after the driver of the freight train disregarded a signal, Sinha added.
Rescue work has been completed, Sinha said, and authorities are working to restore traffic, with the damage less extensive than initially feared.
"The guard's compartment in the passenger train was badly damaged," she added. "There were two parcel vans attached ahead of it which reduced the extent of damage to passengers."
Nearby residents heard a loud crash and saw the pile-up upon going to investigate, several told the ANI news agency, in which Reuters has a minority stake.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences on the loss of life and said Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was on his way to the site.
About 288 people died a year ago in the neighboring state of Odisha, in India's worst rail crash in more than two decades, caused by a signal failure.
Opposition parties criticized Modi's government for its record on rail safety.
"The increase in railway accidents in the last 10 years is a direct result of the mismanagement and negligence of the Modi government, which results in the loss of lives and property of passengers on a daily basis," Modi's main opponent and Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi said in a post on X.
