Forty passengers, including women and children, were killed and 139 injured, 20 of them seriously, when Amritsar-bound Howrah Mail rammed into a derailed goods train near Sarai Banajara in Punjab, about 40 kms from Ambala, early this morning. While twenty-two people died on-the-spot, nine died in hospitals in Fatehgarh Saheb, Patiala and Rajpura, where most of the injured have been admitted, railway and police officials said. Two bodies were found entangled in one of the five affected coaches of mail train and efforts were on to extricate them, they said.
So far one body, that of an army personnel Kulwant Singh has been identified from the identity card recovered from him.


The mainline Ludhiana-Ambala section of northern railway was blocked resulting in diversion of a number of trains, railway officials in Ambala said.
Bureau Report