At least 300 die in Indian train blast: Police
At least 300 die in Indian train blast: Police
GUWAHATI, India (Agencies): At least 300 people were killed yesterday when a powerful bomb ripped through several carriages of a packed train in India's northeastern state of Assam, police said.
A senior police official told Reuters in Assam's biggest city of Guwahati that separatist Bodo militants had used a remote- controlled device packed with explosives to blow up the Delhi- bound train.
"Bodo guerrillas blew up three coaches of a passenger train killing at least 300 people at Sensapani railway station," a senior police official said.
"They used RDX (research and development explosives) and a remote-controlled device," the official said. Sensapani is 200 km (125 miles) west of Guwahati, hub of the tea-rich state.
The blast came a day after tribal Bodo guerrillas blew up a road bridge that formed the main link between India's northeast regions and the rest of the country, injuring seven people.
Activists representing Bodo tribesmen living north of the Brahmaputra river want a homeland within India in the state of Assam, but an extremist fringe, the Bodoland Army, has been fighting for a separate nation since 1989.
A police official was quoted by AFP as saying that the explosion occurred on the Brahmaputra Mail, traveling to New Delhi, near Kokrajhar district in Assam, 216 kilometers (133 miles) from this state capital.
A correspondent of a local Assamese daily who visited the site and spoke with police there said: "Three compartments in the middle got blown away. There were at least 300 passengers in these compartments when the explosion occurred."
There were some 1,500 people on the train at the time of the explosion, he added. The correspondent said most of the passengers in the compartments torn apart in the blast were from Assam.
"The blast took place at 7:15 p.m (1330 GMT), a few minutes after the train left the Kokrajhar station for New Delhi," said Thadou, deputy commissioner of police.
A police official said that he feared "a lot of casualties" and medical and rescue teams were yet to reach the spot as the explosion occurred at a remote village.
He said ten compartments of the train were badly damaged in the blast.
"The train got derailed and traveled for a few minutes before it halted," he added.