By Salman Masood

ISLAMABAD — Two express trains collided in southern Pakistan on Monday (7), killing at least 43 passengers and injuring over 100 others, officials said, the latest in a series of accidents that have raised serious questions about the safety of rail travel in the country.

Most of the passengers were asleep when the Millat Express, a passenger train travelling between the southern port city of Karachi and Sargodha in Punjab province, derailed and fell across the track. Within minutes, another passenger train, the Sir Syed Express, which was en route to Karachi from Lahore in eastern Pakistan, crashed into the first train’s fallen carriages, leaving a mangled wreck, local news outlets reported.

The accident occurred between railroad stations in Daharki and Raiti in the southern province of Sindh, said Nazia Jabeen, a spokeswoman for Pakistan Railways.

A rescue operation was underway, Jabeen said. Several of the injured people were admitted to hospitals in the area, she said, adding that the death toll was likely to rise.

The Pakistan army said military doctors and paramedical staff from a nearby base were taking part in the relief effort. Army and paramilitary troops were already at the accident site, and two army helicopters were involved in evacuations.

Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Twitter that he was “shocked by the horrific train accident” and had ordered a “comprehensive investigation into railway safety fault lines.”

Azam Khan Swati, the railways minister, said the cause of the collision was being investigated.

“It is too early to say whether the accident was due to sabotage or due to the dilapidated condition of the train track,” Swati said.

Pakistan has an abysmal train-safety record, and the State-owned system is plagued by corruption and mismanagement. Promises by successive governments to overhaul the system have remained unfulfilled. Khan, who came to power in 2018, had vowed to modernize the system’s poorly maintained signal system and ageing tracks and to ensure its safety mechanisms.

But train accidents have also been frequent under Khan’s government. More than 70 people were killed when a train caught fire in 2019, in one of the worst train accidents in recent years.

In 2005, three trains crashed in a deadly chain-reaction after a train driver misread a signal, killing at least 127 people and injuring hundreds more in southern Pakistan. At least 210 people died and 700 others were injured in 1990, when a train on a 500-mile overnight run south from the city of Multan to Karachi hit an empty freight train. Officials blamed an improperly set switch.

The latest accident sparked criticism from the political opposition amid growing public frustration with the inability of the government to ensure safety standards of the railroads, which are used by a large part of the population who are unable to afford other means of travel.

Swati, and other ministers, have blamed previous governments for the dismal state of the country’s railroad system. Khan’s critics and political opponents, however, say Khan should have maintained the high standards of accountability that he used to demand while in the opposition.

Khawaja Saad Rafique, a railways minister under previous governments, called for a judicial inquiry into Monday’s accident.

He said poor track maintenance was a major cause of the string of recent accidents. Local news media reported that officials in the district where the accident took place had already raised concerns about aging and worn tracks. But the complaints were not addressed by higher authorities, they said.

“Pakistan railways is the poster child for a broken and dysfunctional public sector employment regime,” said Mosharraf Zaidi, a political analyst and columnist for The News, a daily newspaper.

“As long as Pakistan’s elite continue avoiding reform, Pakistani citizens will be unable to avoid dying at the hands of incompetent and unaccountable public-sector entities,” he said.

-New York Times