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Railway Collision in Eastern India Kills 15

Onlookers watch as rescuers work after a cargo train rammed into Kanchanjunga Express, a passenger train, near New Jalpaiguri station, West Bengal state, India, Monday, June 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Diptendu Dutta)
Onlookers watch as rescuers work after a cargo train rammed into Kanchanjunga Express, a passenger train, near New Jalpaiguri station, West Bengal state, India, Monday, June 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Diptendu Dutta)
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Railway Collision in Eastern India Kills 15

Onlookers watch as rescuers work after a cargo train rammed into Kanchanjunga Express, a passenger train, near New Jalpaiguri station, West Bengal state, India, Monday, June 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Diptendu Dutta)
Onlookers watch as rescuers work after a cargo train rammed into Kanchanjunga Express, a passenger train, near New Jalpaiguri station, West Bengal state, India, Monday, June 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Diptendu Dutta)

A freight train smashed into the rear of a stationary passenger train in India's West Bengal state on Monday, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens, police said, in an accident that railway authorities blamed on a disregarded signal.

Media showed images of the pile-up, with containers from the goods train strewn nearby, and one carriage left nearly vertical after the accident, which comes just over a year after a signaling error caused one of India's worst rail crashes.

At least 15 bodies have been pulled from the mangled carriages, Abhishek Roy, a senior police official in the eastern state's district of Darjeeling, the site of the accident, told Reuters.
Nearly 30 people were injured and rescue teams from the police and national disaster response force were working with doctors and residents of the area to clear debris from the derailed carriages, Roy added.

The goods train hit the Kanchanjunga Express travelling to Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, from the northeastern state of Tripura, driving three carriages of the passenger train off the rails.
It was not immediately clear how many passengers were on board at the time.

Rescuers used iron rods and ropes to work free one carriage of the passenger train that had been swept upwards to lodge on the roof of the freight train by the impact of the collision.

The dead included the driver of the freight train and a guard on the passenger train, Jaya Varma Sinha, the head of the railway board that runs the countrywide network, told reporters.

The accident happened after the driver of the freight train disregarded a signal and hit the rear end of the express train, Sinha added.

Rescue work has been completed, Sinha said, while authorities were working to restore traffic, although the damage had been less extensive than initially feared.

"The guard's compartment in the passenger train was badly damaged," he added. "There were two parcel vans attached ahead of it which reduced the extent of damage to passengers."

Nearby residents heard a loud crash and saw the pile-up upon going to investigate, several told the ANI news agency, in which Reuters has a minority stake.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered condolences on the loss of life in the accident and said Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw was on his way to the site.

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Land Routes across Africa are Twice as Deadly for Migrants as Mediterranean Voyages, UN Estimates

Migrants rescued by Tunisia’s national guard during an attempted crossing of the Mediterranean by boat, rest on the beach at the port of el-Ketef in Ben Guerdane in southern Tunisia near the border with Libya, on December 15, 2021. (AFP/Fathi Nasri)
Migrants rescued by Tunisia’s national guard during an attempted crossing of the Mediterranean by boat, rest on the beach at the port of el-Ketef in Ben Guerdane in southern Tunisia near the border with Libya, on December 15, 2021. (AFP/Fathi Nasri)
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Land Routes across Africa are Twice as Deadly for Migrants as Mediterranean Voyages, UN Estimates

Migrants rescued by Tunisia’s national guard during an attempted crossing of the Mediterranean by boat, rest on the beach at the port of el-Ketef in Ben Guerdane in southern Tunisia near the border with Libya, on December 15, 2021. (AFP/Fathi Nasri)
Migrants rescued by Tunisia’s national guard during an attempted crossing of the Mediterranean by boat, rest on the beach at the port of el-Ketef in Ben Guerdane in southern Tunisia near the border with Libya, on December 15, 2021. (AFP/Fathi Nasri)

The United Nations and partners say more migrants and refugees in Africa are heading northward toward the Mediterranean and Europe, crossing perilous routes in the Sahara where criminal gangs subject them to enslavement, organ removal, rape, kidnapping for ransom and other abuses.
A report released Friday by the UN refugee and migration agencies and the Mixed Migration Center research group estimated that land routes in Africa are twice as deadly as the sea lanes across the Mediterranean — which is the deadliest maritime route for migrants in the world, The Associated Press said.
The report said new conflict and instability in countries including Mali, Burkina Faso and Sudan have been behind a rise in the number of journeys toward the Mediterranean. But Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Guinea were the top countries of origin of migrants.
It comes as many politicians in Europe and beyond, in an important election year, have fanned or drawn support from anti-immigrant sentiment. But conflict, economic strife, repression and the impact of climate change in many countries in the developing world has fanned the flow of migrants across borders nonetheless — at the risk of physical abuse and death.
“Refugees and migrants are increasingly traversing areas where insurgent groups, militias and other criminal actors operate, and where human trafficking, kidnapping for ransom, forced labor and sexual exploitation are rife,” according to a summary of the report, which follows up on a similar study four years ago.
The authors admit there are no comprehensive statistics on deaths on the land routes in Africa. But refugee agency UNHCR has cited a more-than-tripling of the number of refugees and asylum-seekers in Tunisia — a key transit country for migrants aiming to get to Europe — between 2020 and 2023.
The report aimed to spotlight the dangers of land routes that lead to the Mediterranean, which was crossed by over 72,000 migrants and refugees in the first half of this year, and where 785 people have died or gone missing over those six months, according to UNHCR figures.
UNHCR special envoy Vincent Cochetel, citing accounts from some migrants and refugees who survived, said some smugglers dump sick people off pickup trucks ferrying them across the desert, or don't go back to retrieve others who fall off.
"Everyone that has crossed the Sahara can tell you of people they know who died in the desert, whereas you interview people in Lampedusa: Not that many people will tell you about people they know who ... died at sea,” he said, alluding to an Italian island in the Mediterranean.
The UN's International Organization for Migration reported earlier this year that more than 3,100 people died on the Mediterranean crossing last year.
The authors of the report, which drew on testimonies from over 31,000 people, said international action has been inadequate and pointed to “huge gaps” in protection and help for people making the perilous journey.
“In total, 1,180 persons are known to have died while crossing the Sahara Desert for the period January 2020 to May 2024, but the number is believed to be much higher,” it said.
The risk of sexual violence, kidnapping and death was reported by higher percentages of migrants questioned for the report compared to the previous one in 2020, and Algeria, Libya and Ethiopia were considered by respondents as the most dangerous.
The teams have tallied hundreds of cases of organ removals — a practice that has happened for years, Cochetel said. Sometimes, migrants agree to such removals as a way to earn money.
“But most of the time, people are drugged and the organ is removed without their consent: They wake up, and a kidney is missing,” he said.
Libya has emerged as a primary transit point for migrants fleeing war and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. In March, authorities discovered a mass grave containing the bodies of at least 65 migrants in the deserts of western Libya.