NEW DELHI, Dec 2: Thirty-three people were killed when a 140-year-old bridge toppled on an inter-city passenger train in eastern India on Saturday, a spokesman for the state-run rail company said.

Rail officials had earlier placed the toll at 20 dead and 19 injured in the accident at a rail station in the Indian state of Bihar.

“The death toll has now touched 33 and 18 other passengers are in hospital with various degrees of injuries,” spokesman Ashok Ganguli told AFP by telephone from the site of the accident in Bhagalpur town.

“Now there are no more bodies in the crushed coach,” he said.

“We are withdrawing staff from search and rescue operations as we are satisfied that all survivors and bodies have been brought out.

Now we are focussing on clearing the blocked tracks,” he said.

Among the dead were an infant girl and seven women, a senior police official said from Bhagalpur, a normally sleepy town on the banks of the river Ganges.

Deputy rail security chief Ajay Verma said 27 unclaimed bodies had been placed on the station’s platform for identification.

“We are waiting for relatives to arrive in Bhagalpur to help us in the identification process,” Verma said.

“Some of the corpses are mangled beyond recognition,” an eyewitness said, as teams of emergency doctors reached the site amid anti-government protests by hundreds of Bhagalpur residents.

Television footage showed the train car partially buried in rubble and twisted metal from the collapsed bridge.

“Dismantling was going on the 140-year-old bridge at Bhagalpur station. The third arch fell on the coach,” said Samir Goswami, another spokesman for the state-run railways.

Rail officials said they were unsure how many passengers were in the coach when the accident occurred, but that at least 30 passengers emerged unscathed from one end of it just after the incident.

India’s Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav has called for an inquiry into the accident and suspended two engineers overseeing the dismantling of the now-collapsed bridge.

Indian President Abdul Kalam condoled the death of the passengers and ordered the Bihar state government to provide relief to those in hospital, a presidential spokesman told AFP.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too expressed “distress and grief” and sent personal condolences to the bereaved families, the premier’s spokesman Sanjaya Baru said in New Delhi.

The inter-city train had crossed into Bihar en route to Jampalpur town when the accident occurred at Bhagalpur, 1,240 kilometres east of New Delhi.

Indian Railways, one of the world’s largest rail networks, transports more than 13 million passengers daily and reports some 300 accidents a year.—AFP