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27 dead after two India trains derail in floods

– ‘Nobody came for us’ –

Television footage showed a row of carriages lying on their sides in a field of mud, as rescuers with specialist cutting equipment were deployed to the site along with doctors.

“The train was off the tracks and water was everywhere. And within a second, the whole train derailed and we all got trapped inside,” a passenger told regional TV

“Nobody came for us, we were stuck there for three to four hours.”

Rescuers were initially working through the night mostly in darkness, with the flood waters hampering their efforts.

“The entire area has been reeling under heavy rainfall for the last few days. The roads are badly damaged, even the access road,” Saxena said.

The heavy flow of water had washed away some of the bodies from the carriages into a field, police chief Gupta said.

Monsoon rains have hit large swathes of the country in recent weeks, flooding rivers and roads and claiming some 180 lives mainly in western and eastern India.

The government has ordered an inquiry into the cause of the accident, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his sadness at the loss of life.

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“Authorities are doing everything possible on the ground. The situation is being monitored very closely,” Modi said on Twitter.

India’s railway network, one of the world’s largest, is still the main form of long-distance travel in the vast country, but it is poorly funded and deadly accidents are frequent.

India’s government has pledged to invest $137 billion to modernise its crumbling railways, making them safer, faster and more efficient.

An express train ploughed into a stationary freight train last May in northern Uttar Pradesh state, killing 26 and injuring 44 others.

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