BUHARI MOURNS AS 115 DIE IN INDIA TRAIN ACCIDENT

A train in northern India has derailed, killing at least 115 people and injuring dozens more, Sky News reports.

Indian Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, said the overnight express train travelling between the cities of Patna and Indore came off the tracks near Kanpur city.

Fourteen carriages left the tracks, railway officials said.

Two senior police officials in Kanpur said their teams had pulled out at least 100 bodies from the badly damaged carriages.



“Still many more passengers are trapped,” a senior railway official in New Delhi said.

A passenger, Ramchandra Tewari, said, “There was a loud sound like an earthquake. I fell from my berth and a lot of luggage fell over me.

“I thought I was dead, and then I passed out.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences on Twitter.

“(I am) anguished beyond words on the loss of lives due to the derailing of the Patna-Indore express. My thoughts are with the bereaved families,” he wrote.

Railways Minister, Suresh Prabhu, said the government would immediately investigate the causes of the derailment and promised accountability with the “strictest possible action.”

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday expressed sorrow and regret over the train disaster in India.

According to a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, the President expressed sorrow and profound shock as he commiserated with Modi and the families of the victims.

“The loss of human life on whatever scale, and anywhere, is bad enough. The world becomes united in sorrow during such moments because our common humanity makes us a family,” he said.

The President said the government and the people of Nigeria felt and shared the pains and the anguish of the families of the victims and all Indians.

Buhari prayed that God would comfort the grieving Asian nation.

India’s railway system is the world’s fourth largest, ferrying more than 20 million people each day, but it has a poor safety record, with thousands of people dying in accidents every year.