India Train Crash: Up to 230 Dead and 900 Injured in Odisha

More than 230 people were killed and hundreds more injured when a passenger train derailed and struck two other trains in eastern India on Friday, officials said, a rail accident whose toll was exceptionally large even by the standards of a nation with a long history of deadly crashes.

The accident, in the state of Odisha, shocked India, now the world’s most populous country, and renewed longstanding questions about safety problems in a system that transports more than eight billion people a year — roughly equivalent to the world’s population. The country has invested heavily in the system in recent years, but it has not yet been enough to overcome decades of neglect.

Odisha’s chief secretary, Pradeep Jena, said on Twitter early Saturday that 233 people had been killed in the crash and an additional 900 injured. Officials said they expected the toll to continue to climb.

As daylight broke, teams of rescue workers with dogs and cutting equipment were laboring to free injured people trapped in the wreckage. Officials said that 115 ambulances had been mobilized and that all nearby hospitals were on standby.

The government in the state, home to about 45 million people, declared a day of mourning after India’s worst rail disaster in two decades. Dozens of trains were canceled. Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister of railways, said on Twitter that teams from the air force and the National Disaster Response Force had been mobilized to help.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised “all possible assistance” for the victims and offered his condolences.

“In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families,” Mr. Modi wrote on Twitter. “May the injured recover soon.”

The crash occurred when several cars of a Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express train derailed and collided with a second passenger train, according to a statement by South Eastern Railway. Local officials said the tangle ultimately involved a third train carrying goods.

Ashok Samal, a shopkeeper, told The Hindustan Times that he was ending his day near the railway in his village of Bahanaga on Friday when he heard a deafening noise, ran to the track on the main line between Kolkata and Chennai, and saw a pile of mangled train cars.

“There were loud shrieks and blood all over,” he told the newspaper, adding that he saw people trapped under coaches and people wailing for help.

Mr. Vaishnaw, the railway minister, told reporters that he had ordered an investigation to determine the cause of the crash.

“Our immediate focus is on rescue and relief,” he said from the site of the accident. “We will know more after the inquiry.”

The crash was the nation’s deadliest at least since a crash in 1999 in the eastern state of West Bengal that killed 285 people.

India, a nation of about 1.4 billion people, has one of the world’s most extensive railway systems, with more than 40,000 miles of track — enough to wrap around the earth about one and a half times.

In 2014 alone, there were more than 27,000 train-related deaths, according to the country’s National Crime Records Bureau. That figure includes cases in which people were struck while walking on tracks or fell out of moving trains.

Passenger safety has come under scrutiny in India in recent years.

In 2012, a committee appointed to review the safety of the rail network cited “a grim picture of inadequate performance largely due to poor infrastructure and resources.” It recommended a host of urgent measures, including upgrading track, repairing bridges, eliminating road-level crossings and replacing old coaches with safer ones that better protect passengers in case of an accident.

The government has since invested heavily to renovate and modernize old trains and tracks. But in a system weakened by years of neglect, problems persist.

Indian news reports said that as word of the latest crash spread, desperate relatives went to Howrah Station in West Bengal, where one of the trains had been heading, to learn the status of their loved ones.

At Howrah, one man, Sapan Chowdhury, told The Indian Express he was relieved to find out that his 23-year-old daughter was alive, though she had been injured by shards of glass.

Others were not so lucky.

Victoria Kim contributed reporting.