At least 32 people were killed and 200 injured in India today when three coaches of a passenger train plunged from a bridge into a river in the southern state of Kerala, police said.
A police official in Calicut, close to the site of the accident, said only a few more bodies were likely to be trapped in the submerged coaches, and that some 100 passengers had been rescued from the Mangalore-Chennai Mail train.
A railway official said preliminary investigation indicated a missing girder on the bridge might have caused the accident.
Officials had initially feared the death toll could rise sharply because about 300 passengers were in the three coaches which plunged into the Kadalundi River between the towns of Parappanangadi and Calicut at around 5 p.m. (11.30 Irish time).
A railway official in Trivandrum, Kerala's capital, said heavy rain had initially hampered relief work, but rescue teams swung into action again after a few hours when it subsided.
"Two hundred passengers have been injured, of whom 100 are in a serious condition", he said.
The police official in Calicut said a fourth coach was hanging from the short bridge 16 km (10 miles) from Calicut. Two others had jumped off the track but were still on the bridge.
Authorities said that navy personnel, including 12 divers, had rushed to the site from a base at the port of Cochin.
The accident is the second of its kind in Kerala. At least 105 people were killed when four coaches of the Island Express plunged into a lake near Quilon in 1988.