MANSAR, Dec 14: Two trains collided head-on in northern India on Tuesday, killing 50 people and injuring around 150, Punjab's chief minister said, as rescue workers scrambled to free trapped passengers.

At least four carriages were badly damaged in the collision of the two passenger trains in Punjab, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh told the state assembly in Chandigarh.

The bodies pulled from the twisted wreckage included 15 men, 11 women and one child. More passengers were trapped inside the trains, some screaming for help. The express train and local train crashed deep in rural India, 150km east of the Sikh holy city of Amritsar.

"The cause of the accident is not known," Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav said before leaving for the scene of the tragedy. Railway officials, however, said there appeared to have been a mixup that allowed the local train onto the single-track main line at the wrong time.

Railway spokesman M.Y. Siddiqui said at least 50 passengers had "suffered major injuries." The express had left Jammu on Tuesday morning bound for the western city of Ahmedabad.

Up to 700 people could have been on the express alone at the time of the accident, said Mulkha Raj Sharma, superintendent at Jammu station. Soldiers were called out to help in the rescue efforts and cranes were at the crash scene near Mansar village to pull apart the trains.

Rescue workers used cutting equipment to slice through the carriages to reach trapped passengers. Witnesses said the locomotives of both trains had been badly mangled in the crash just before midday (1130am PST), but the driver of one train was pulled out alive. His condition was not known. -AFP