/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/CU2YMZVSHFNB3NOR3UGMYRJWMY.jpg "At least 261 dead in India's worst train accident in over two decades")
At least 261 dead in India's worst train accident in over two decades
BHUBANESWAR, India, June 3 (Reuters) - At least 261 people have died in India's worst rail accident in over two decades, officials said on Saturday, after a passenger train went off the tracks and hit another one in the east of the country.
One train in Friday's accident also hit a freight train parked nearby in the district of Balasore in Odisha state, leaving a tangled mess of smashed rail cars and injuring 1,000.
The death toll has reached 261, said K. S. Anand, chief public relations officer of South Eastern Railway. The AFP news agency had earlier quoted an official as saying 288 people had died.
Surviving passenger Anubha Das said he would never forget the scene. "Families crushed away, limbless bodies and a bloodbath on the tracks," he said.
Video footage showed derailed train coaches and damaged tracks, with rescue teams searching the mangled carriages to pull the survivors out and rush them to hospital.
