POLGAHAWELA (Sri Lanka), April 27: Fifty bus passengers were killed and dozens injured when a train rammed into the crowded vehicle at a level crossing in Sri Lanka on Wednesday, crushing it and setting it ablaze, officials said. None of the passengers and crew on the train was hurt, a railway official said, but it was one of the island’s worst accidents in years.
Doctors said the death toll was likely to rise as many survivors were in a critical condition, particularly 10 people who had been shifted to a Colombo hospital.
The bus was said to have been carrying 70 to 100 people.
“The signal was green and the level crossing gates were closed,” train driver H.A. Sirisena said at the site of the crash in central Sri Lanka.
“Then I saw the bus trying to cross ... and the next thing I knew was the engine hitting the rear of the bus.”
“After the first impact, the bus spun around and hit the train again. I have been in this job for 41 years and this is the first time something like this has happened,” said the balding 59-year-old, with tears in his eyes.
The bus, which was dragged for about 300 metres on the track after the collision, lay in a mangled heap of metal, with its middle torn open.
Luggage, glass and children’s clothes were strewn on the track and on the embankment, a few metres away from a road running parallel to the track in Polgahawela town, about 60kms northeast of Colombo.
Some clothes were also stuck to the rail engine, the front of which was badly dented and some parts twisted.
“I was sitting at the very back of the bus. I saw flames coming from the front. There was little time to do anything,” said survivor Priyalatha Imbulgoda.
“Some neighbours from my village were sitting next to me, I don’t know what happened to them,” she said, speaking from her bed in Kurunegala government hospital in the region.
BUS DRIVER BLAMED: Hospital director Ananda Gunasekera, said 33 bodies had been brought to the hospital and two of the injured died later. More bodies were lying at other hospitals, he added.
At the hospital morgue, relatives wailed over bodies of their loved ones as others lined up to check pictures of the dead stuck on a wall by police.
The bus driver and conductor were among the survivors, and were lying on opposite beds in the hospital. The driver had apparently broken an ankle and refused to speak.
Police said the two men had been arrested and were being guarded from angry survivors and relatives.
“I saw body parts strewn along the track and more bodies were stuck in the bus and people were screaming for help. The driver of the bus should be shot,” said K. Navaratne, a train passenger.
Authorities blamed the crash on what they said was the bus driver’s negligence.
The bus was apparently trying to make its way past the barriers and cross the tracks when it was hit by the train, said Gunapala Vitanage, chief train controller in Colombo.—Reuters
