ISLAMABAD, Oct 31 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A fire swept through a Pakistani train on Thursday killing at least 65 people after a gas canister passengers were using to cook breakfast exploded.
Flames roared through the train cars as the train approached the town of Liaquatpur in Punjab, officials said.
Television footage showed flames pouring out of the carriages as people could be heard crying in the incident near Rahim Yar Khan district in Punjab province.
“According to information reaching us from site of the accident, more than 65 people were killed and over 40 injured,” provincial health minister Dr Yasmin Rashid said.
The wounded were being rushed to hospitals in the nearby city of Bahawalpur and elsewhere in Rahim Yar Khan district, she said, adding that only 18 of the bodies were identifiable.
“Terrible … train tragedy with gas cylinder carried by passenger exploding,” tweeted human rights minister Shireen Mazari.
Local media reported that some of the passengers had been cooking breakfast when the cylinder exploded.
“Two cooking stoves blew up. They were cooking, they had (cooking) oil which added fuel to fire,” Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told Geo earlier.
“Most deaths occurred from people jumping off the train,” he added.
Television pictures showed fire and black smoke pouring from the train’s windows after it came to a stop on a stretch of line flanked by fields.
“People were jumping off, some of them were on fire,” a witness told Geo.
Dozens of people could be seen crowded onto the tracks staring at the three burning carriages, which had been disconnected from the rest of the train, television images showed.
Mazari said the train was the Tezgam, one of Pakistan’s oldest and most popular train services, which runs between the garrison city of Rawalpindi, adjacent to Islamabad, and the southern port city of Karachi.
People sneaking stoves onto trains in order to prepare meals on long journeys is a common problem, the minister said, adding that many of the passengers were heading to a conference organised by the Tablighi Jamaat Sunni Muslim missionary movement.
In July, at least 23 people were killed in the same district when a passenger train coming from the eastern city of Lahore rammed into a goods train that had stopped at a crossing.
About 130 people were killed in 2005 when a train rammed into another at a station in Sindh province, and a third train hit the wreckage.
Rural Punjab has witnessed several gruesome accidents over the years, including an oil tanker explosion in 2017 when more than 200 people were killed after the truck crashed on a main highway in central Punjab province while carrying some 50,000 litres of fuel from Karachi to Lahore.
It exploded minutes later, sending a fireball through crowds from a nearby village who had gathered to scavenge for the spilled fuel, despite warnings by the driver and police to stay away. — NNN-AGENCIES
