Odisha train accident: A team of doctors and experts from the AIIMS Delhi and other central government hospitals of the national capital have been rushed to Bhubaneswar through a special IAF plane to provide medical assistance to those injured in the deadly three-train accident at Bahanaga Bazar station in Odisha’s Balasore, official sources said on Sunday.
The sources further said that the team is carrying medicines and heavy critical care equipment. The triple train accident has left at least 275 people dead and over 1,100 injured.
Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya also reached Odisha. He will visit the AIIMS Bhubaneswar and the Cuttack medical college today to take stock of medical assistance being provided to the victims of the train accident.
Doctors from AIIMS-Bhubaneswar were earlier dispatched to Balasore and Cuttack in Odisha to assist in the relief operations at the site of the train accident, Mandaviya had said on Saturday.
The crash involving Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express and Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express and a goods train occurred on Friday near the Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore, about 250 km south of Kolkata and 170 km north of Bhubaneswar. Twenty-one coaches were derailed and severely damaged in the accident, trapping hundreds of passengers. Both passenger trains were at a high speed and it has been cited by experts as one of the main reasons for the high number of casualties.
From a vantage point high above the ground, the disaster site looked as if a powerful whirlwind had thrown the coaches like toys on top of each other. Closer to the ground, bloodied, disfigured bodies and dismembered body parts lay enmeshed, creating a grotesque sight.
Preliminary investigations have revealed that a signal was given to Coromandel Express to enter the main line but it was taken off and the train entered the loop line and crashed into a goods train parked there. The Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express which was coming at high speed rammed into the coaches of Coromandel Express that had scattered on the adjacent track.
(With agencies input)
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