Two coaches of an express train caught fire in southern India on Saturday, killing at least 26 passengers, many of whom became trapped and suffocated after the doors failed to open, officials said.
At about 3:45 a.m., panicked passengers broke the windows and many saved themselves by jumping from the train when the inferno and thick black smoke started to spread through the two cars, the Associated Press reported.
Sixty-seven passengers were in the two cars when the fire broke out about 1 mile from the small town of Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh state, said a spokesman for the railways, C.S. Gupta.
The fire was prevented from spreading by bringing the train to a halt and delinking the two coaches from the rest of the carts, Gupta said.
At least 26 bodies, including two children, were retrieved from the carts after firefighters put out the blaze, said a railway official at the site of the fire. More than a dozen people were taken to hospitals with injuries sustained when they jumped from the coaches, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The official said the firefighters had to force the doors open and make their way through the smoke-filled coaches to reach the injured and the dead. Many bodies were found near the jammed doors.
According to the AP, medical teams carried out autopsies to identify the bodies, many of which were charred beyond recognition. The train was traveling from Bangalore to Nanded in the western state of Maharashtra.
Preliminary reports from the site indicated that the fire was caused by an electrical short circuit, said Railways Minister Mallikarjun Kharge. An investigation is underway.
With one of the world's largest railroad network, carrying 18 million passengers daily, accidents are common in India. Most collisions and fires are blamed on poor maintenance and human error, the AP reported.
