Official: Death toll rises to 63 in Pakistan train collision By ASIM TANVEER AND MUHAMMAD FAROOQ today

 

Official: Death toll rises to 63 in Pakistan train collision

By ASIM TANVEER AND MUHAMMAD FAROOQtoday
Railway workers try to clear the track at the site of a train collision in the Ghotki district, southern Pakistan, late Monday, June 7, 2021. An express train barreled into another that had derailed in Pakistan before dawn Monday, killing dozens of passengers, authorities said. More than 100 were injured, and rescuers and villagers worked throughout the day to search crumpled cars for survivors and the dead. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)
1 of 17
Railway workers try to clear the track at the site of a train collision in the Ghotki district, southern Pakistan, late Monday, June 7, 2021. An express train barreled into another that had derailed in Pakistan before dawn Monday, killing dozens of passengers, authorities said. More than 100 were injured, and rescuers and villagers worked throughout the day to search crumpled cars for survivors and the dead. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)

GHOTKI, Pakistan (AP) — The death toll from a horrific collision of two trains in southern Pakistan rose to 63 on Tuesday after rescuers pulled 12 more bodies from crumpled cars a day after the crash, officials said.

The collision took place on a dilapidated railway track in Ghotki, a district in the southern Sindh province, when an express train barreled into another that had derailed minutes earlier before dawn on Monday.

Most of the passengers — there were about 1,100 on both trains — were asleep when the Millat Express, traveling between the southern port city of Karachi to Sargodha in eastern Punjab province, derailed and many of its cars overturned. As passengers scrambled to get out, another passenger train, the Sir Syed Express, crashed into the derailed coaches.

Rescue work continued throughout the day Monday, overnight and into Tuesday. Bodies of passengers killed in the crash were taken to their hometowns for burial.

ADVERTISEMENT

Shafiq Ahmed Mahisar, commissioner in Sukkar district, said 12 more bodies were retrieved after the overnight efforts. More than 100 passengers were injured, he said.

Army engineers and soldiers dispatched from a nearby military base assisted in the rescue and heavy machinery arrived in Ghotki hours later, to cut open some train cars.

It was unclear exactly what caused the derailment. Aijaz Ahmed, the driver of Sir Syed Express, said he braked when he saw the disabled train but did not have time to avoid the collision.

The more critically injured were transported to hospitals with better facilities in Sindh and also Punjab province, while those more stable were being treated in Ghotki hospital, said Usman Abdullah, who also confirmed the 63 fatalities.

Ata Mohammad, a passenger, said he was asleep on the Millat Express when it derailed. He woke up to a big jolt and saw other passengers trying to climb out from overturned and derailed coaches. Then the other train hit.

“I feel as if I am still hearing cries,” Mohammad wept, who lost family members in the crash.

Sher Muhammad, a 45-year-old farmer was working on his land when he saw a train derail on the tracks some distance away. He rushed to the scene but before he could reach it, the second train crashed into the first.

“I don’t know whether I will be able to forget that tragic scene,” Muhammad said, recounting how he saw women, children and men crying for help.

Villagers who reached the scene first started helping the victims, pulling the injured and the dead from the wreckage until ambulances started coming.

According to Azam Swati, the minister for railways, experts were still trying to determine the cause of the accident. Swati told The Associated Press that all aspects would be examined, including the possibility of sabotage.

By noon Tuesday, the military said the rescue operation was completed and the railroad track in Ghotki was being repaired to resume train service.

Train accidents are common in Pakistan, where successive governments have paid little attention to improving the poorly maintained signal system and aging tracks.

In 1990, a packed passenger plowed into a standing freight train in southern Pakistan, killing 210 people in the worst rail disaster in the nation’s history.

___

Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Image

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH & FLEET STREET FINANCIAL DISPATCH LONDON — SEPTEMBER 2025 — SPECIAL ECONOMIC INVESTIGATION THE ARCHITECTURE OF GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND THE MECHANICS OF UNIVERSAL DEMAND An Analytical Examination of the Post-War Industrial Order, the Fallacy of Unfettered Laissez-Faire, Mechanisation, and the State-Guaranteed System of Participatory Remuneration BY OUR SPECIAL ECONOMIC CORRESPONDENT IN FLEET STREET, Warren A. Lyon with Cheuy Leon Stephen Lam Tom. LONDON — In the tenth year following the cessation of European hostilities in 1955, as the Western world navigates the transition from wartime economic controls to the mid-century industrial consensus, thoughtful observers in Fleet Street, Westminster, and the City must confront a fundamental problem of political economy. The modern capitalist apparatus—stretching across the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth, North America, and Western Europe—operates upon a single, immutable law: the imperative equilibrium between Supply and Demand. Yet, despite the vast expansion of mechanized production, factory automation, and electronic computation, our financial architectures continue to suffer from a crippling structural defect: the systemic failure to guarantee requisite consumer purchasing power (ability to pay/ATP) across the whole of the populace. I. THE LESSONS OF THE POST-WAR CONSCIOUSNESS: SUPPLY, DEMAND, AND THE ELECTRIC CIRCUIT To comprehend the crisis of modern industrial organization, one must discard the antiquated Victorian dogma that human existence is defined solely by manual toil. Under the classical doctrine of laissez-faire, labour was treated as an elastic commodity, hired when factories required muscle and cast aside into poverty when machines replaced handiwork. In an age dominated by automatic machinery, conveyor systems, and early electronic computing, such a doctrine is not merely obsolete; it is actively destructive to the civic health of the realm. Consider the macro-economic structure as an electrical power grid carrying a constant current of thirty amperes. Under a rational and balanced order, this current is bifurcated equally along two parallel conductors: fifteen amperes are directed to energise the lamp of Industrial Supply (the manufacturing apparatus, capital investment, and technological innovation), while the remaining fifteen amperes flow uninterrupted to power the lamp of Demand—the Ability to Pay vested within the consumer public. In an unregulated laissez-faire system, however, an artificial blockage is introduced along the conductor powering Consumer Demand. It acts as a deliberate obstruction—resembling a corkscrew jammed into the brass fittings of a ship's engine room. The electrical energy, unable to reach the lamp of Demand, encounters extreme resistance; heat builds rapidly within the circuit, insulation scorches, and the entire socio-economic edifice is threatened with catastrophic conflagration. Energy in an economic system, like energy in physics, is never destroyed; if it is denied its proper outlet in legitimate consumer spending, it manifests as market collapse, civil unrest, shoplifting, and social decay. Click here.

Post a Comment