SARDIHA, India - Maoist rebels derailed a high-speed train packed with sleeping passengers into the path of a freight train in eastern India Friday, killing at least 71 people, police said. Survivors described a night of screaming and chaos after the blast and said it took rescuers more than three hours to reach the scene. The blue passenger train and the red cargo train were knotted together in mangled metal along a rural stretch of track near the small town of Sardiha, about 90 miles (150 kilometres) west of Calcutta. Nearly 10 hours after the blast, railway police and paramilitary soldiers were using blowtorches and cables to try to reach at least a dozen passengers still trapped in the wreckage, said A.P. Mishra, general manager of the railway system in that area. Sher Ali, a 25-year-old Mumbai factory worker, was traveling with his wife, two children and his brother's family when they were jerked awake by a loud thud. A moment later, he said, their car was tossed from the track. "My sister-in-law was crushed when the coach overturned. We saw her dying, but we couldn't do anything to help her," said Ali, who had cuts to his head and arms. The rest of the family survived, though a ten-year-old nephew had been badly injured and had been hospitalized. He was unable to go to the hospital, though, because all his money was in his luggage inside the wreckage and he was afraid it would be stolen unless he kept watch. The passenger train was traveling from Calcutta to the Mumbai suburb of Kurla when 13 cars derailed. A cargo train then slammed into three of the cars from the other direction, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee said. Mishra said the train had been derailed by a bomb and that the tracks had also been sabotaged. Banerjee said authorities suspected the bomb was planted by Maoist rebels. West Bengal state Home Secretary Samar Ghosh said 65 people were confirmed dead after the derailment and more than 200 people were injured. Sardiha is in West Bengal. Helicopters were eventually brought in to help evacuate the injured to local hospitals, officials said. The derailment took place in an isolated, rural stronghold of India's Maoist rebels, known as Naxalites, who have stepped up attacks in recent months and had called for a four-day general strike starting Friday.
