Disasters in India, Pakistan, Greece: 10 of the worst rail accidents of the last decade
The toll from a horrific three-train rail crash in India rose to 288 early Saturday
With hundreds killed and more injured in a three-train collision in India, AFP looks back on some of the worst rail disasters of the last 10 years:
On February 28, 2023, a head-on collision between a freight train and a passenger train on the route between Athens and Thessaloniki claimed 57 lives, in the country’s worst rail accident.
On March 10, 2022, a freight train loaded with stowaways derailed in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Lualaba province, killing at least 75 people and injuring 125 others. A month later, at least eight people died when a goods train derailed in the same area.
On June 7, 2021, at least 63 people died when a train hurtling through farmland derailed and collided with another passenger service in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.
On April 2, 2021, at least 49 people were killed and 200 injured when a passenger train collided with a truck that slid down an embankment near the city of Hualien — the island’s worst rail disaster in decades.
At least 74 people died and more than 40 were injured on October 31, 2019, when a fire broke out on an overcrowded passenger train carrying pilgrims to a religious gathering near Lahore.
A speeding train ran over revellers watching fireworks during a Hindu festival in northern India on October 19, 2018, killing at least 60 people.
At least 146 people died when an Indore-Patna Express train with around 2,000 people on board derailed in Uttar Pradesh on November 20, 2016, sending carriages crashing into each other.
A train travelling from the capital Yaounde to the economic hub of Douala derailed on October 21, 2016, killing at least 79 people and injuring around 550 others. It was travelling “abnormally” fast before the crash, the investigation into the crash concluded.
A goods train carrying hundreds of illegal passengers flew off the rails in a swampy and inaccessible part of the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo on April 22, 2014, killing at least 136 people. Many had to be buried in mass graves nearby.
About 80 people were killed and about 140 injured when a high-speed train slammed into a concrete wall near the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela on July 24, 2013. The train had been approaching a curve at more than twice the speed limit.
