NEW DELHI, India — An express train derailed Sunday in northern India, killing 12 people and injuring at least 70. Railroad authorities said the cause may have been sabotage, reports a wire service.
Thirteen cars of the Shramjeevi Express went off the tracks near Lucknow, 220 miles east of New Delhi. The 24-car train was bound for Patna, the capital of eastern Bihar state.
“Preliminary investigations point to the possibility of sabotage,” said Devender Singh Sandhu, a Northern Railways spokesman.
Sandhu said metal pieces used to join the tracks were found near the scene and appeared to have been removed. He would not say whether there were any suspects.
The accident occurred at night while many of the 1,800 passengers were sleeping. Most of the casualties were in the first four cars, which overturned, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.
One of the two engines also jumped the tracks, Sandhu said.
The injured were taken to nearby hospitals. Anxious relatives crowded information counters at the train stations in Patna and New Delhi to ask about their loved ones.
India’s state-run railway system runs 7,000 passenger trains a day and suffers about 300 accidents a year, two-thirds of them blamed on staff negligence.
The sprawling rail network is 66,875 miles long, the world’s second largest after China’s. Increasing traffic has made it vulnerable to accidents.