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At least 60 people died and 92 others were injured Monday when a moving train rammed into a stationary train in eastern India, authorities said.

The rear-end collision at the Sainthia station flung the roof of one of the wrecked compartments onto an overpass, television footage showed.

In a late afternoon statement, railway authorities put the death toll at 60. At least 92 passengers were injured, it said.

Indian railway minister Mamata Banerjee announced financial assistance of about $10,575 for each death and about $2,115 for every seriously wounded passenger.

Emergency crews used gas cutters — gas-powered tools similar to blowtorches — free travelers trapped inside the mangled coaches of the Vananchal Express. Giant cranes then pulled twisted metal from the railroad.

Authorities are investigating what caused the collision, railway spokesman Anil Saxena said.

India’s massive rail network is marred by a poor safety record. At least 100 train accidents occurred in the 2009-2010 fiscal year, according to officials. Authorities registered 115 rail crashes in 2008-2009.

Officials have identified human error as a major culprit in train wrecks.

By CNN

Train collision in India kills dozens

Two transport accidents in China have claimed dozens of lives, with a passenger train derailed by a landslide and a truck colliding with a bus.

State media said 32 people were killed on Sunday when a truck travelling in the wrong direction on an expressway collided head-on with a bus in the country’s northeast.

Another 21 people were injured and sent to hospital.

The collision occurred on a section of the expressway that was undergoing maintenance in the city of Fuzin in Liaoning province, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Derailed

In another incident, Chinese state television said a landslide in eastern China derailed a passenger train early on Sunday morning, killing at least eight people and injuring 55.

The train was bound for the tourist destination of Guilin when it was derailed in a mountainous area near Fuzhou city in eastern Jiangxi province.

Heavy rains caused a landslide that buried the railway tracks, and the train derailed when it crashed into the huge mound of dirt and debris, China Central Television said.

Xinhua said about 2,000 rescuers, including firefighters, police and soldiers, managed to evacuate at least 280 people who were trapped inside the carriages.

Chinese authorities have launched an investigation into the accident.

Tens of thousands of people die in transport-related.

Rohan Vos, Rovos Railways: “We had a lot of Americans on the train”
Brake failure is being investigated as the possible cause of a luxury train crash in South Africa which killed four people, a safety official says.

The train derailed near the capital, Pretoria, on Wednesday with 55 tourists on board and 30 members of staff.

The victims were all female employees, one of whom was four months pregnant and went into labour at the scene, losing her baby.

According to train owners Rovos Rail, seven people remain in hospital.

Rovos Rail’s Rohan Vos said one person is in a critical condition, the South African Press Association reports.

There were about 40 US tourists, along with French, German and British citizens, on board the Pride of Africa when it derailed.

Mr Vos told Associated Press news agency that the passengers had been relatively safe in wood-panelled carriages - some dating back to the 1920s - but the staff had been in a kitchen area that was less protected.

Emergency worker Chris Botha at the scene said the railway coaches were lying on top of each other.

“It’s absolute carnage,” he told AFP news agency.

Rail Safety Regulator spokesman Carvel Webb said a full report into the causes of the accident would take two weeks.

“It appears from the initial measurement and assessment that were done that there was not adequate braking left on the train during the coupling and uncoupling process,” AFP quotes him telling South Africa’s Radio 702.

Rovos Rail offers “unique train safaris” and some of its coaches have hot showers and air conditioning.

The two-day Cape Town-Pretoria trip can cost from about $1,500 (£974) to nearly $3,000 per passenger, AP reports.

Two commuter trains collided head-on at rush hour in a Brussels suburb Monday, killing as many as 25 people, Belgian rail officials said. Other officials said the death toll was lower.

Belgian National Railways told the VRT radio network that 25 people had died. The suburb’s mayor said the death toll was 20. Lodewijk De Witte, governor of the province of Flemish Brabant, told VRT that 10 people were killed.

The trains collided in light snow just outside of the station at Buizingen around 8:30 a.m. local time.

Television reports showed that the force of the collision pushed the first car of each train up off the tracks. The cars ended up resting against each other. Photos from the scene showed another car that appeared to have tipped onto its side. Rescuers rushed victims on stretchers along the tracks.

“The most recent information we have is that 20 people died,” town Mayor Dirk Pieters told VRT. “I base this on what the police and firefighters tell me.”

There was no immediate word on the number of injured.

Pieters said the seriously hurt were taken to hospitals and the lightly injured were moved to a Buizingen sports complex.

The crash caused massive damage to overhead power lines. Eurostar reported on its Web site that its high-speed trains had suspended service in and out of Brussels and could remain shut down all day.

The international high-speed network Thalys, which links major cities in Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands, temporarily halted all traffic because its trains use the same rails as commuter lines near Hal, said Patricia Baars, a company spokeswoman.

‘Very severe accident’

At least four Thalys trains were stopped en route, and the railway operator deployed staffers to stations where they were rerouted to provide assistance to travelers on board, she said.

“No (Thalys) train is moving for the moment … it’s very hard to know today when services will resume,” she said. “It appears this was a very severe accident.”

Thalys has at least 25 round-trip trains operating between Paris and Brussels each day, plus seven linking Brussels and Amsterdam and six from Belgium to Cologne, Germany.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash.

It was the most serious Belgian train crash since March 28, 2001, when eight people died when a crowded train plowed into an empty train driving on the wrong tracks. Hard money training.