At least 65 killed in fire on India-Pakistan train, bomb may be responsible

Feb 19, 2007 01:02:45

DEWANA, India (AP): An explosion on a train headed for Pakistan set off a fire that swept through two coaches, killing at least 65 people in an attack that an official said was aimed at undermining the peace process between India and Pakistan. Dozens more people were injured. Authorities say two suitcases packed with unexploded crude bombs and bottles of gasoline were found in train cars not hit in the attack, leading them to believe the fire was set off by anidentical explosive device. "This is an act of sabotage," Railway Minister Laloo Prasad told reporters in Patna, India. "This is an attempt to derail the improving relationship between India and Pakistan." India's junior home minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, said the homemade bombs were not powerful and were simply intended to start a fire on the train one day before Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri was to arrive in New Delhi for talks on the ongoing peace process. Jaiswal called the attack part of "conspiracy ... to disturb communal harmony, India's stability and to disturb the peace process between India and Pakistan." The fire engulfed two coaches of the Samjhauta Express, one of two train links between rival India and Pakistan. Because of security concerns, the train is kept sealed - with locked doors and barred windows in the lower-class coaches - from New Delhi tothe border, and passengers may have been trapped inside the burning cars. The train fire broke out just before the train reached the station in the village of Dewana, about 80 kilometers north of New Delhi. People who live near the tracks rushed to the train with buckets of water soon after the fire broke out, and the blaze was eventually extinguished after fire trucks arrived. Speaking to reporters at the scene, Bharti Arora,superintendent of the Haryana state railway police, said the death toll had risen to 65. At least 30 passengers who were burned or injured in the blaze have been hospitalized in the nearby town of Panipat, the general manager of the Northern Railway, V.N. Mathur, told reporters. The dead included both Indians and Pakistanis, officials said. The train was traveling from New Delhi to Atari, the last railroad station before the border with Pakistan. At Atari, passengers change trains in a special station, switching to a Pakistani train that takes them to the Pakistani city of Lahore. The train links are one of the most visible results of the peace process underway between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, and one of the easiest ways to travel across the heavily militarized border.(***)