Pakistan train derailment kills four, injures over a dozen
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Rescue workers searching for victims following the derailment of the passenger train on the outskirts of Multan in Pakistan on Oct 13.
PHOTO: AFP
- At least four people were killed and many injured when a train derailed near Multan in Pakistan’s Punjab province on Oct 13.
- Emergency services sent 11 ambulances and 30 rescue workers. The cause was still unknown, and President Asif Ali Zardari ordered a transparent investigation.
- The crash adds to concerns about Pakistan’s ageing railway system, where derailments are common despite ongoing modernisation plans.
AI generated
MULTAN, Pakistan – At least four people were killed and over a dozen others injured in a train derailment on Oct 13 near Multan in the south of Pakistan’s Punjab province, emergency services and a rescue worker told AFP.
Farooq Ahmed, a spokesman for Punjab’s emergency services department, said four people had been killed and at least 17 injured, while the cause of the incident remained unknown.
Ahmed added that 11 ambulances and 30 rescue workers had been dispatched to the scene after the accident was called in at 5.21am local time (8.21am Singapore time).
A rescue worker at the derailment site confirmed that at least four people were killed in the incident, giving a higher figure of 25 people injured.
An AFP journalist saw the body of one person who had died in the accident inside a train carriage.
Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif have expressed concern over the train’s derailing in Punjab.
Zardari ordered the authorities to “conduct transparent investigations to determine the cause of the accident”.
At least 34 people were killed in August 2023 in southern Pakistan, near Nawabshah, when a train came off the tracks.
Crashes and derailments occur frequently on Pakistan’s antiquated railway system, which has nearly 7,500km of track and carries more than 80 million passengers a year.
The colonial-era network still has tracks, junctions and bridges dating back more than 150 years, although modernisation is under way as part of the massive China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. AFP