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LAST UPDATE | 31 Oct 2019
AT LEAST 74 people were killed and dozens injured after cooking gas cylinders exploded on a train packed with pilgrims in Pakistan today, some dying after leaping from carriages to escape the inferno, authorities said.
Television footage showed flames pouring out of three carriages as people could be heard crying during the incident, in a rural area of central Punjab province.
Some of the passengers — many of whom were pilgrims travelling to one of Pakistan’s biggest religious gatherings — had been cooking breakfast when two of their gas cylinders exploded, Ali Nawaz, a senior Pakistan Railways official, told AFP.
Many Pakistanis carry food on long train journeys, but gas cylinders are supposedly banned. Pakistan’s railways minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed later told reporters it had been a “mistake” to allow the cylinders on board.
Dozens of people crowded along the tracks staring at the burning carriages, which had been disconnected from the rest of the train.
Firefighters rushed to the scene near the Rahim Yar Khan district. Rescue workers and soldiers could also be seen, as bodies were carried away covered in white sheets.
“A cylinder exploded and I don’t know how, fire erupted everywhere,” one survivor, Muhammad Imran, told AFP from a hospital in Rahim Yar Khan.
“I jumped out of the train to save my life. There was a whole line of people behind me, they pushed,” he said.
Muhammad Nadeem Zia, a medical superintendent at the hospital in Liaquatpur, the nearest town, told AFP some of the victims were killed by head injuries sustained as they leapt from the moving train. He said at least 44 people had been injured.
Those hurt were being rushed to hospitals in the nearby city of Bahawalpur and elsewhere in the district. Officials said many of the bodies were charred beyond recognition.
Prime Minister Imran Khan said he was “deeply saddened” by the tragedy and had ordered an urgent inquiry.
Religious pilgrimage
Khan said the train was the Tezgam, one of Pakistan’s oldest and most popular rail services, which runs between the southern port city of Karachi to the garrison city of Rawalpindi, neighbouring Islamabad.
It had been diverted to facilitate the religious pilgrims travelling to Lahore.
Passengers were travelling to attend the annual Tablighi Ijtema, one of Pakistan’s biggest religious gatherings, which each year sees up to 400,000 people descend on a tented village outside Lahore for several days to sleep, pray and eat together.
The majority of those killed were pilgrims from southern Sindh province, Nawaz said.
The Tablighi Ijtema, which began today and concludes on Sunday, was founded by religious scholars more than five decades ago and focuses exclusively on preaching Islam.
It usually sees hundreds of camps and sub-camps set up on the dusty site outside Lahore to accommodate people from across Pakistan.
Railways minister Ahmed said it had been “tradition” for authorities to allow people travelling to the festival to board trains carrying cooking cylinders.
“I admit our mistake … this will not happen in the future,” he told journalists in televised comments from the nearby city of Multan.
“A tragedy that could have been avoided but ever since I can recall while travelling by train no baggage check or restrictions enforced,” human rights minister Shireen Mazari tweeted.
‘Could have been avoided’
Nawaz said two of the carriages were economy coaches, while one was business class, and that up to 88 passengers can fit into each.
Train accidents are common in Pakistan, where the railways have seen decades of decline due to corruption, mismanagement and lack of investment.
In July, at least 23 people were killed in the same district when a passenger train coming from the eastern city of Lahore rammed into a goods train that had stopped at a crossing.
Accidents often happen at unmanned crossings, which frequently lack barriers and sometimes signals.
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Almost twice the numbers dying from suicide as die on the roads. This is at national crisis level at this stage and needs to be tackled with the same amount of resources that have been put at the disposal of the road safety campaigns.
I have to agree. This is a national emergency.
Every life lost is a tragedy.
No surprise here. One other issue is that you cannot even do voluntary work because you’ll lose your social welfare if you do as “you are not available for interview or to take up full time employment”. Just goes to show the idiocy of the Political Institutions / Department Of Social Welfare. If you were doing voluntary work and living on the €188 a week, would you continue to that if offered a full time job? I know that if I was called to an interview I would tell the voluntary organisation that I cannot make it in as I have an interview and if I got the job I would take it and leave the voluntary work.
Voluntary work will help keep people sane and motivated to look for work, otherwise people will stay at home get demoralised and think what’s the point in even looking for a job. People think that there are a lot of people are on welfare because they “like it”. RUBBISH! I’d like the politicians to live on social welfare benefits for a month and to carry out all the strings that go with it and then justify how they can say it is a “comfortable lifestyle”
There is a form to complete, and if approved ie a reputable voluntary organisation is essential, you can do voluntary work – I do :).
Voluntary work is just that and if you volunteer and at the start explain if an interview comes up you are attending then that is appreciated and understood. And your skills will be much appreciated and you will keep your work skills up to date, motivate yourself and give back to the community – go for it CSEC Bio? If you want to volunteer for Sea Shepherd just let me know, happy to have you on board.
who on earth keeps thumbing comments down?. if I find out who they are they will be terminated.
Just ignore them.
Even if every banker & politician was made to read that report I wonder just how much they would really care. Peoples lives seem to matter less and less.
I personally know of 5 individuals, young men, who were in construction and were caught where they owed the supplier for materials and the developers refused to pay them anything, they were left with massive bills and lost of pressure from the suppliers. The individuals could not take legal action against the developers because of this NAMA thing ! and every one of the individuals took their own lives, leaving young families, parents, siblings, wives, girlfriends, friends, neightbours and community devestated.
And the Government has just cut spending on Suicide assistance ? WHY ?
sad the people at the top never cared never did nor never will i highllighted this last week in the lenihan article and in it lies some of their decision making bullshit for the ordinary people how much more can a race of people take without revolting something got to give
Lenihan gets a Kings funeral while those driven to suicide rarely even get a mention in the media. Its a tragedy.
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