Pak train collision kills 14

KARANCHI: A passenger train smashed into a cargo train on the outskirts of Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi today, killing up to 14 people including women and children, authorities said.

“We have received 14 bodies, including three children and three women, and there are more than 45 injured,” doctor Seemi Jamali of Jinnah Hospital told AFP. Most of the casualties were in the passenger train.

Police and rescue workers said they were still working to retrieve bodies and survivors from the wreckage of the passenger train hours after the crash.

“So far we have recovered the bodies of 12 passengers and rescued 38 injured people and sent them to hospitals,” Muzaffar Shaikh, a senior railway police official, told AFP earlier in the afternoon.

Police suspected three or four more bodies were still trapped inside one of the carriages, he said. The accident took place at Juma Goth, in the suburbs of Karachi, when the driver of the Karachi-bound Allama Iqbal express ignored a traffic signal and collided with the goods train, senior railway official Aftab Memon said.