14 dead as train derails in India

NEW DELHI: A train came off the tracks in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh on Saturday, killing at least 14 people and wounding dozens more as carriages slammed into each other, a local official said.

TV channel CNN News18 put the death toll at 20 in the crash close to Muzaffarnagar, about 130 km north of the capital New Delhi.

Local residents told the channel that some derailed carriages hit nearby houses.

Train crashes are frequent in India, which has the world’s fourth biggest rail network.

Poor investment in past decades in the vast network and rising demand means overcrowded trains are running on creaking infrastructure.

Saturday’s accident is at least the fourth major passenger train derailment this year and the third in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. A crash in November in Uttar Pradesh killed 150 people.

Sanjeev Balyan, a Muzaffarnagar lawmaker, told Reuters at least 14 people had been killed and 58 seriously injured, after a local medical officer had previously put the death toll at 11.