Canada runaway train: Lac-Megantic death toll rises to five, 40 still missing

Another two bodies have been found after a runaway train carrying crude oil exploded in the Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, police say.

The death toll from Saturday's blast stands at five; there are fears it will rise further as 40 people are missing.

The pre-dawn explosion sent a fireball and black smoke into the air, forcing the evacuation of 2,000 people.

Dozens of buildings were destroyed in the town, about 250km (155 miles) east of Montreal.

Police are trying to account for dozens of missing people - popular bars near the blast site were said to have been crowded at the time.

"There are about 40 people, more or less, who are considered to be missing," police spokesman Michel Brunet told reporters. "There could be more, there could be less."

Police said earlier they expected the death toll to rise, but were checking whether people reported missing were simply away on holiday.

'It's a mess'

Two of five cars that exploded are still ablaze nearly 36 hours later, Lac-Megantic Fire Chief Denis Lauzon told reporters on Sunday morning.

Firefighters have been battling the flames with water and a fire retardant, but are staying at least 1,000 ft from the burning tankers for fear of more blasts, he added.

Fire Chief Denis Lauzon: "We still have a risk of explosions as we still have tankers on fire"

About 30 buildings - including some of the town's most historic structures - were obliterated by the blast.

"We lost the bibliotheque [library] which had all the memories of people here - it's a mess," said Chief Lauzon.

The train's 73 cars carrying pressurised containers of crude oil reportedly uncoupled from an engine parked outside the town around 01:00 (06:00 BST) on Saturday, gathering speed as they rolled down the tracks before derailing in Lac-Megantic.

Eyewitnesses said that by the time the cars reached the town they were travelling at considerable speed.

Bernard Demers, who runs a restaurant near the blast site, said the fireball that followed the derailment was "like an atomic bomb", the Sunday Telegraph reported.

The Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train had five locomotive engines and 73 cars filled with light crude oil, and was parked in the village of Nantes - about 7km (four miles) from Lac-Megantic - during an overnight driver shift-change, said a company spokesman.

An engineer had parked the train and put the brakes of its five locomotive engines on "properly" before going to a local hotel for the night, said the spokesman, Joe McGonigle.

The cars filled with fuel somehow became uncoupled, causing them to roll downhill into the town and derail, he added.

A one-kilometre exclusion zone was set up amid fears of more pressurised containers exploding.

The train was carrying the crude oil from the Bakken Field in North Dakota. Montreal, Maine & Atlantic owns more than 800km (500 miles) of track serving Maine, Vermont, Quebec and New Brunswick.

A lakeside town that is home to some 6,000 people, Lac-Megantic is close to the US border with Vermont and 130 miles north of Maine's capital, Augusta.

Sunday 7 July 2013

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23218614

Drone to take part in Uttarakhand search operation

As the fate of several hundreds of people remains unknown in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) on Saturday decided to deploy drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to locate missing persons.

Senthil Kumar of the Madras Institute of Technology (MIT), Chennai, and his team of research scholars reached Guptkashi to launch ‘Daksha,’ the indigenously developed drone, to trace persons probably trapped in inaccessible terrain.

Fitted with thermal and high definition cameras, the drone was on a trial sortie for a few hours. Fresh rains slowed down the process during the early hours, Dr. Senthil Kumar told The Hindu over the phone.

On seeing reports in the media that many persons were still missing in Uttarakhand and that rescue workers were unable to access certain pockets, Dr. Kumar met Tamil Nadu Director-General of Police K. Ramanujam and offered to launch drones in the search operation. In coordination with the NDRF officials, the Tamil Nadu Police and Anna University facilitated the team to visit the flood-affected areas.

“In the event of any person being alive in the debris or a pile of bodies, the thermal camera can sense temperature variation and track his/her location. High quality visuals of inaccessible terrain will be captured by the HD camera,” he said.

Rain hampers operation

Though the NDRF officials were planning to take the team to Kedarnath and its adjoining towns, inclement weather conditions prevented helicopter movement during the day. When reports last came in, the team was heading towards a valley some 100 km away from Guptkashi in Army trucks.

Sunday 7 July 2013

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tn-drone-to-take-part-in-uttarakhand-search-operation/article4889299.ece

Road accidents: Thieves' paradise

On August 25, 2012, Felix Osike, an editor with New Vision, left Kampala for his home village in Tororo. But before they could reach Iganga town, they had an accident.

“It was approaching 9:30am and we were about 3km from Iganga town when the front tyre burst, forcing the car to overturn and roll four times before stopping on a road bunker,” Osike says.

The family remained trapped in the car.

“I sustained a deep cut on my forehead and because I was bleeding profusely, my vision was blurred. My wife had multiple injuries on the arm and knee, but was stable. The other passenger complained of chest and back pain,” he says.

Because the car had rolled over, the doors could not open.

Osike says they called for help and when help finally came, to their surprise, they were not Good Samaritans, but thieves. The people were more interested in the property than saving their lives.

They started looting as the trio wailed in pain. They took the merchandise they had in the boot of the car. One looter who had just come from the garden used his hoe to rip open the bonnet so he could steal the car battery.

Even after Osike’s wife managed to come out of the car, the rescuers would not let her get out with any of the valuables.

“My wife tried to pick her bag, my phone and a laptop, but the looters pushed her back, saying she should leave the things in the car. When she was finally out, she called for help and I was also pulled out,” he says.

Within a short while, the family had lost all their valuables. They were only lucky that two genuine Good Samaritans came in time to save them.

“One of them stopped a motorcycle which took us to hospital, while another called the Police rescue team to tow the vehicle from the accident scene,” recalls Osike.

To date, he is still in shock. “I have heard cases of accident victims being killed as marauding gangs who hide under the pretext of being Good Samaritans grab their valuables,” he says.

Osike is only one of many victims in what is now becoming a habit of Ugandans who live along major highways. Several people who spoke to the Sunday Vision told of their harrowing ordeal at the hands of these thieves.

Just last month, a crowd was caught on camera grabbing bags, shoes and wallets from passengers who were screaming for help. It is so bad that sometimes accident victims are killed or injured even more when they try to save their valuables.

Susan Kigenyi, a banker in Jinja, still nurses a scar she got after being hit with a piece of metal as she attempted to protect her bag. While travelling from Iganga to Jinja, she was involved in an accident at Bugembe in Jinja.

“Two people seated next to me died on the spot and I was lucky I survived. But when people came to rescue me, I could clearly see that they were thieves. I had money which I was taking home to pay my siblings’ fees, but when I held onto the bag, a bulky man hit me with a metal object. I had to let go of the bag,” she says.

Robbing identity

“In some of the cases, the thieves even take one’s identity documents and personal belongings, making it hard to try and locate their next of kin,” says Sebbi Onito, the brother of two-time national golf amateur champion Charles Yokwe, who died in a road accident near Lugazi in 2005.

Yokwe was heading to their family home in Jinja when the accident occurred. The mini-bus in which he was travelling had a head-on collision with a Kampala-bound fuel tanker near Lugazi.

Yokwe’s phone and wallet were stolen and his body was taken to Kawolo Hospital with no identification.

Uganda Professional Golfers Association (UPGA) secretary Fabian Rwalinda, says: “We got concerned about Yokwe’s whereabouts. We tried calling his phone for two days, but it was off.”

Rwalinda was among those who led the search and helped identify the body four days after it lay unclaimed. “His family members were also in the dark. They were expecting him in Jinja late Sunday evening. Finally, we called Kawolo Hospital and were told there was one unclaimed body, so we dispatched a team that went and identified him.

“His phone was stolen. His professional golfer’s ID and the money he had on him were also taken. Perhaps if they had left them on him, it would not have taken that long to identify our friend’s body. The the mortuary people would have contacted us early enough. This should surely stop,” Rwalinda says.

Not so lucky

Last year, the Police in Lwengo arrested a Local Council official of Katovu village for allegedly stealing over sh230,000, a mobile phone and other properties from accident victims.

Ramanzan Kabanda was among the first people who had turned up at the scene of an accident at Kalegero town about 2km from Lyantonde. The accident left two people dead and 10 others injured.

Kabanda led a group of people who pretended to be rescuers, but instead robbed the victims of their belongings. They took money and other valuables from the bodies of the driver and his turn-boy, who at the time were alive, but left to bleed to death.

The victim’s Fuso truck, number UAP 752L, heading to Mbarara, collided with a Western Coach bus, registration number UAE 898U, heading to Kampala.

Based on a tip-off from some concerned residents, detectives followed Kabanda up to his home and recovered the money and the mobile phone of one the deceased persons.

Kabanda claimed that he took the money and phone for safe keeping until the owners recovered. He added that he was planning to take the items to the Police at the time he was arrested.

Foolhardiness

Whatever the risk, they will still loot. Last week’s trailer inferno in which over 30 lives were lost in Namungoona, is one such incident. A few years ago, there was another tragedy at Busesa, where over 60 people were burnt to death as they rushed to siphon fuel from a fuel truck that had overturned.

Sunday Vision visited some of the accidents spots where survivors had been robbed of their valuables and talked to some of the residents.

“It is a lifetime opportunity when this accident happens. It is the only opportunity for us to get our hands on expensive items like phones and other valuables,” John Kitimbo of Magamaga says.

Many of the residents said this was an opportunity to make a quick kill. In some blackspots, residents even ‘patrol’ the area, waiting for an accident.

As we interviewed Kitimbo, a trailer carrying soft drinks passed by and he wished it would fail to negotiate the bend so he could cash in on the sodas.

Sunday Vision also learnt that some residents on highways even pour molasses or soap on some roads, causing cars to skid or veer off the road.

In 2010, the Police had a rough time controlling rowdy residents of Kitintale after a truck belonging to one of the beer companies overturned, spilling beer. Some got so drunk that they were unable to crawl from the scene of crime.

Police warning

The Police has warned people who live along main roads and steal the property of accident victims to desist from such practice.

Patrick Onyango, the deputy Police spokesperson, said anyone caught would be dealt with severely to deter others. “It is a crime to steal,” Onyango said.

Sunday 7 July 2013

http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/644790-road-accidents-thieves-paradise.html

Despite exhaustive efforts, some bodies never get identified

They are not caskets, just plain brown cardboard boxes. There were no flowers. No eulogies. They were not lowered into the earth. They are stacked in neat, tight rows on gray metal shelves at the University of Tennessee’s Forensic Anthropology Center.

They hold the scant remains of people who have never been identified, the secrets of their lives, and in some cases the secrets of their deaths.

One unanswered question common to all of them: Who were you?

A common denominator for all of them: they are missing persons, but many may have never been reported missing.

“Even if there was never an official missing report filed on them, it is obvious that all of them are missing from somewhere, and many of them are probably missed by someone,” said Todd Matthews, communications manager for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).

The forensic center has 55 of them. Most are cases from East Tennessee, including six from Knox County. Each story is as incomplete as it is different. Some have been there for decades.

It is unknown how many unidentified remains cases there are nationally. Estimates by some authorities range from 40,000 to 60,000.

NamUs (www.namus.gov) is the first national resource center for cases of missing persons and unidentified bodies. It allows anyone to cross-check descriptions of a missing person with information about unidentified bodies. It is available for free to the general public. There is also a section available only to law enforcement and medical examiners for the exchange of confidential investigation.

NamUs estimates there are 4,400 new cases of unidentified bodies each year. Most will be identified within a year. But, despite many advances in forensics and anthropological sciences, about one of every four will not, and of those many remain unidentified for years — maybe forever.

“We are light years away from where we were 40 years ago,” said UT’s Dr. William Bass, founder of the Forensic Anthropology Center. “As the ID processes have matured, we can ID more and more people, and there are organizations and Internet sites that focus on the missing. But there are still some disconnects in the system.”

Some medical examiners and coroners still do not file all of their cases with national databases, such as the FBI’s NCIC or the relatively new NamUs. Also, many law enforcement agencies around the country do not participate in NamUs. And DNA is no guarantee of an identification.

“DNA is a wonderful tool, but for it to be of any help, you still have to find someone whose DNA can be compared to the person it was drawn from,” Bass said.

“If you don’t get them identified fairly soon through forensics, then it becomes more difficult,” said David Davenport, head of the joint cold case squad of the Knox County Sheriff’s Office and Knoxville Police Department. “And the longer you go without getting their name, the less likely it becomes that you ever will.”

There are success stories in even the oldest of cases. In 1982, skeletal remains of a black man who had been shot execution style were found in a wooded area of Knox County. A likeness of his face was circulated. But it was not known at the time that the victim had a beard, so the likeness did not show that.

More recently, an age-regressed likeness of him as a younger man was created, and that was the key that led to his identification, said Amy Dobbs, criminal analyst with KCSO. Family members saw it, and their DNA positively identified him in April of this year.

His case is now an open and very active homicide investigation, Dobbs said.

Many unidentified bodies and unreported missing persons are from the ranks of people who live transient lives: homeless people, drifters, the mentally ill, runaways, street prostitutes or gay male hustlers, said Dr Kenna Quinet, professor of criminal justice at Indiana University and Purdue University. If they disappear, it often goes unnoticed, she said.

“Some of these people do not even have a post office box for a Social Security check,” she said. “They are literally people with no family ties.”

Quinet has studied cases of unreported missing persons. She calls them the “missing missing,” and holds that many of them who turn up dead — perhaps more than realized — are victims of serial killers.

Bass offers an equally chilling scenario: in some cases, unidentified homicide victims may not have been reported missing because their killer is a family member.

The unidentified bodies at the Forensic Anthropology Center were first found in all sorts of sordid locations. Makeshift graves. On roadsides. Left in woods. Floating in lakes or rivers.

Most range in age from teenager to 60. But two of them are infants, their tiny bodies stuffed in a suitcase that was hidden for at least 15 years before they were found.

In some cases, the foulest of play is obvious.

Body on Buttermilk Road

On Oct. 1, 1985, the remains of a white man, about 5-feet-7 and estimated to be 51 to 60 years old, were found off Buttermilk Road in Loudon County. He had been shot twice in the head. He had removable dentures, no teeth, a medical implant in his aorta, and he wore a bracelet. All of that could help identify him.

“You would think that a brother, an uncle, a friend, someone, has to be missing this guy and wondering what happened to him,” said Detective Lt. Patrick Upton of the Loudon County Sheriff’s Office.

The proximity of his body to an Interstate 75 exit led detectives to wonder if he was killed at another location — maybe even out of state — and dumped there.

A likeness of the victim’s face was circulated in the immediate area, but the only result was to exclude one man who was reported missing.

In those days, there was no national database for missing person reports, and it was a common practice of some police agencies to periodically purge unresolved cases of missing adults, Quinet said.

“One of the first things you do in a homicide case is find out who was the last person known to be with (the victim),” Upton said. “That’s pretty hard to do when you don’t even know who the victim is.”

Lady in the Lake

On March 6, 2000, two fishermen discovered her nude body floating in Melton Hill Lake. Oak Ridge police say she might have entered the water upstream, in Knox County.

She had drowned. How and why she went into the water remain unknown. Since March was still a bit chilly for skinny dipping, Oak Ridge Police Detective John Criswell doubts she went in of her own accord.

She was white, appeared to be in her mid-20s, possibly her early to mid 30s. She had long brown hair. She had pierced ears but no jewelry on her.

She had never given birth, had no distinguishing marks and appeared to have been healthy. She had very good dental work, and had perhaps once worn braces.

Despite the circulation locally of five images of her face, she remains unidentified.

Criswell said the quality of her dental work makes it more likely that someone cared enough about her to have filed a missing person report.

“I think the right family person has just not seen (the image of) the facial reconstruction” of the woman found in the lake, Criswell said.

But he faces the same dilemma that the Loudon County case presents: with no clue as to where the victim is from, it is not known where a missing person would have been filed or where information about the case could be circulated.

Hit By a Car

On the evening of May 24,1993, he stepped in front of a moving car on Cedar Bluff Road near Cross Park Drive. Just under 6 feet tall, he and appeared to be about 51 to 60 and had reddish gray hair and a full beard. He wore a black wooden cross on a black cord chain necklace, and an “Advance” brand wristwatch.

There was an orthopedic rod in his right leg, and the bone around it was unhealed, indicating that injury was “very recent,”one. Even more promising, the rod had a number on it. All of that raised hopes for a quick ID, said Dr. Lee Meadows Jantz, the forensic anthropology center coordinator.

“We were thinking ‘Aha! A Quincy moment!” said Jantz, referring to a popular TV show of the early 1980s about a medical examiner who always identified the body and solved the case. “We thought we could identify him.”

But disappointment set in. Records are conflicting, but either the company that made the rod had purged the records that contained the serial number, or the number was only a model number.

Babies in the Suitcase

On Feb. 21, 1985, while cleaning out the crawl space in a house he had just bought in Cleveland, Tenn., a man came across a black leather suitcase. It was cracked and rotting with age, and inside were the bones of two infants, both white. One was wrapped in a baby blanket, the other in a shoebox.

They were no older than six months, and both could have been stillborn. The cause of death could not be determined. It is possible they were twins.

Pieces of newspapers and other items found in the trunk indicated the bodies had been placed in the trunk around 1964 to 1970. Some items suggested possible links to several different towns, including Knoxville and Chattanooga.

“I can still remember going into that crawl space and taking pictures,” said retired TBI Agent Stephen Cole, who worked with the Cleveland Police Department on the case. “It was very frustrating that we never identified them or found out what happened. I still think about that case sometimes.”

DNA science was in its early stage when their bodies were found. Later, when DNA collection from remains at the forensic anthropology center began, it was not initially drawn from the infants.

Jantz said the time frame of their deaths and circumstances of the case made it unlikely that they would have been reported missing, or that there would be a family member’s DNA sample on file somewhere for a match.

But the infants’ DNA is scheduled to be taken soon and placed into the NamUs database. The DNA will tell the infants’ sex and if they were related.

Bass, who retired in 1995, examined the bones when they were found. He vividly recalls the case.

“It isn’t every day that you get a suitcase full of the bones of two kids,” he said. “We did everything we could with the science available at the time to identify them,” and the police and TBI pursued the few aging clues in the suitcase as best they could, he said.

“That case was so different from all of the others,” Bass said. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could solve it?”

Said Matthews: “We will never be able to solve them all, but we can always try to identify them all.”

Sunday 7 July 2013

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/jul/07/despite-exhaustive-efforts-some-bodies-never-get/

At least 80 missing in Canada train blaze: firefighter

At least 80 people are missing after a driverless oil tanker train derailed and exploded in the small Canadian town of Lac-Megantic, destroying dozens of buildings, a firefighter back from the scene told AFP Saturday.

The accident in the small Quebec town, located around 250 kilometers (155 miles) east of Montreal, created a spectacular fireball and forced 2,000 people from their homes.

Officials earlier only confirmed one fatality, but had warned the toll could rise. A search for bodies was to begin Sunday at dawn.

The firefighter said on condition of anonymity that there had been at least 50 people in one bar that was consumed by the flames.

"There is nothing left," he said.

Witnesses reported as many as six explosions after the train derailed at about 1:20 am (0520 GMT) in Lac-Megantic, a picturesque resort town of 6,000 residents near the border with the US state of Maine.

Michel Brunet, a spokesman for Quebec's provincial police, said late Saturday the official death toll remained at one but added: "We expect there will be more fatalities."

Radio-Canada had earlier reported that 60 people were unaccounted for in Lac-Megantic, where the blaze was still raging, 20 hours on.

"There have been several reports" from people who said they were unable to reach relatives who lived near the accident site, Brunet said.

"The fire is still raging, our investigators have not yet even be able to get close to the scene," he added, more than 12 hours after the incident.

An initial evacuation zone of a kilometer around the crash site was widened Saturday as a precaution against harmful particles in the air, bringing the total to 2,000 people forced to leave their homes.

Around 150 firefighters were battling the blaze, including some who came across the border from Maine, just 25 kilometers south of the town.

"No conductor on board"

The cause of the crash was still unknown, but a spokesman for the Montreal Maine & Atlantic company, Christophe Journet, told AFP the train had been stopped in the neighboring town of Nantes, around 13 kilometers west of Lac-Megantic, for a crew changeover.

For an unknown reason, Journet said, the train "started to advance, to move down the slope leading to Lac-Megantic," even though the brakes were engaged.

As a result, "there was no conductor on board" when the train crashed, he said.

A team of investigators from Canada's transportation safety agency was quickly dispatched to the scene to investigate.

One witness, Nancy Cameron, posted a photo on social media websites showing one of the train's locomotives spouting flames near Nantes.

Other witnesses were in Lac-Megantic when the train came barreling in.

"When we came out of a bar, we saw cars arriving in the center of town at full speed," Yvon Rosa told Radio-Canada.

"We heard explosions and there was fire everywhere. We ran to the edge of the water," Rosa said.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered his "thoughts and prayers" to the community and said the federal government was ready to provide assistance.

The Montreal Maine & Atlantic train consisted of five locomotives and 77 rail cars and was carrying oil from the US state of North Dakota, said the company's vice president of marketing, Joe McGonigle.

But Quebec authorities spoke of 72 cars transporting 100 tonnes of oil each. "Around 10 cars have been secured and separated from the train," the Quebec emergency agency said in a statement.

The Montreal Maine & Atlantic company has a network of more than 800 kilometers through Quebec and New Brunswick provinces and the neighboring US states of Maine and Vermont.

Sunday 7 July 2013

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/at-least-80-missing-in-canada-train-blaze-firefighter-388896

In U’khand, ‘100 Nepalis still missing’

As the Uttarakhand government of India wrapped up rescue work in the flood -ravaged Badrinath-Kedarnath areas, the New Delhi-based Nepali Embassy has said around 100 Nepalis are still missing in the disaster.

In Kathmandu, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arjun Bahadur Thapa, however, said only 50 Nepalis are missing in the flash flood s that hit the north Indian state on June 16.

Among the missing Nepalis listed by the embassy are pilgrims and migrant workers, mainly from the western part of the country. Officials at the embassy said they are unsure about the exact figure of the missing Nepalis.

“We cannot say anything for certain unless the Uttarakhand government makes an official announcement on the number of deaths,” an embassy official in New Delhi said.

Meanwhile, relatives of the missing persons, who arrived in places like Dehradun, Haridwar and Rishikesh are returning home. With all hopes lost of finding their their missing family members alive, they are filing missing reports at local police stations so that the authorities can reach them should they find the dead bodies.

The Nepali embassy said it is still receiving calls from relatives of missing persons from districts like Salyan, Rukum, Rolpa, Dang and Jajarkot. A majority of these callers are looking for their relatives, who were working in Uttarakhand.

As Nepal and India share an open border, there is no knowing how many Nepali workers and pilgrims were caught in the disaster, how many survived and returned home, or how many are still missing .

Some of the missing Nepalis had reportedly reached Mumbai and Himachal Pradesh after surviving the incident, but that does not suggest the number of missing persons will be any less, Pushpa Raj Panday of the Haridwar Nepali Community said. “There are chances that the number of missing Nepalis could be two-fold more than what has been reported so far.”

Acting Nepali Ambassador to India Tirtha Raj Wagle said the embassy has been providing Rs 2,000 each to the survivors of the flood ing to travel back home. The money being provided to the survivors is from the embassy’s donation reserve. The Nepal government has not provided any money to support the rescue and relief of Nepalis in Uttarakhand.

The famous Hindu pilgrimage sites that once attracted a multitude of faithful is enveloped in miasma of hopelessness and desolation.

According to the estimates of the Uttarakhand government, more than 10,000 people died in the disaster, while 3,064 are missing . The government has said it will wait until July 15 before declaring the missing persons dead and begin the process of handing out compensation to the families of the victims.

Sunday 7 July 2013

http://www.ekantipur.com/2013/07/06/top-story/in-ukhand-100-nepalis-still-missing/374375.html

Train hits rickshaw in Pakistan, killing 14

A train travelling through central Pakistan hit an overloaded motorcycle rickshaw at an unmanned railway crossing, killing up to 14 people, a senior police officer says.

Himayun Tarar said the crash Saturday happened near Khanpur village in Shaikhupura district of Punjab province.

Tarar said the rickshaw driver didn't notice the train and tried to cross the tracks.Pakistani police and media officials gather around the bodies of the train accident victims in Khanpur town of district Shaikhupura, Pakistan, on Saturday after the train collided with an overloaded rickshaw.

Reports pegged the death toll at anywhere from 12 to 14.

"Twelve people died on the spot. Four people with critical injuries were taken to hospital, of whom two expired," Muhammad Asim, a senior doctor at the local hospital, told AFP.

"Two of them were children under 12 years old," he said adding that many bodies were mutilated and unable to be identified.

The officer said many people died before rescue workers reached the crash.

Such crashes routinely occur in Pakistan, as the country has hundreds of unmanned rail crossings and motorists driving overloaded vehicles routinely speed through without looking for oncoming trains.

Pakistan has a poor railway system with a track dating back to British rule and old coaches. Many Pakistanis avoid travelling by train due to low safety standards and poor facilities.

Sunday 7 July 2013

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/07/06/pakistan-rickshaw-train-crash.html