Passengers Burnt Alive in Locked Train

ATleast 66 people were killed in India yesterday when an explosion on a train heading for Pakistan started a fire that swept through two locked carriages.Two suitcases packed with unexploded crude bombs and bottles of petrol were found in carriages not hit in the attack, and it is believed the fire was set off by an identical device.”This is an act of sabotage, ” said railway minister Laloo Prasad. “This is an attempt to derail the improving relationship between India and Pakistan.”The fire engulfed two coaches of the Samjhauta Express, one of two train links between India and Pakistan.The dead included Indians and Pakistanis.Because of security concerns, the train is kept sealed – with locked doors and barred windows in the lowerclass coaches – from New Delhi to the border, and passengers may have been trapped inside the burning carriages.The fire broke out just before the train reached the station in the village of Dewana, about 50 miles north of New Delhi.People who live near the tracks rushed to the train with buckets of water, and the blaze was eventually extinguished after fire engines arrived.India’s junior home minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, said the home-made bombs were not powerful and were simply intended to start a fire on the train one day before Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri was to arrive in New Delhi for talks on the ongoing peace process.Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed anguish at the loss of lives and said “the culprits will be caught”.At least 30 passengers who were injured in the inferno.The train was travelling from New Delhi to Atari, the last railway station before the border with Pakistan. At Atari, passengers change trains in a special station, switching to a Pakistani train that takes them to the Pakistani city of Lahore.The train links are one of the most visible results of the peace process under way between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, and one of the easiest ways to travel across the heavily militarised border.In 2002, Hindu-Muslim riots broke out after a train fire killed 60 Hindus returning from a religious pilgrimage. Muslims were blamed for the fire, and more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed by Hindu mobs.

(c) 2007 Northern Echo. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.