Sabotage suspected in India train crash

SARDIHA, India – Rescuers scoured the wreckage of a passenger express train Friday that derailed and collided with a cargo train in eastern India, killing at least 90 people and injuring hundreds. The government accused Maoist rebels of sabotaging the tracks.

As night fell, railway workers and paramilitary soldiers were using two cranes to lift and pry apart train cars in search of survivors from the Jnaneswari Express, which was heading from Calcutta to suburban Mumbai when it derailed about 1:30 a.m. Friday.

Railway officials said they expected the death toll to rise because bodies were still trapped between the engines of the two trains, which collided along a rural stretch of track near the small town of Sardiha, about 90 miles west of Calcutta in West Bengal state.

The area is a stronghold of India’s Maoist rebels, known as Naxalites, who had called for a four-day general strike in the area starting Friday. The Naxalites have launched repeated attacks in recent months – despite government claims that it was launching its own crackdown.

Just 11 days ago, the rebels ambushed a bus in central India, killing 31 police officers and civilians. A few weeks before that, 76 soldiers were killed in a rebel ambush – the deadliest attack by the rebels against government forces in the 43-year insurgency.

Bhupinder Singh, the top police official in West Bengal, said posters from the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities, a group local officials believe is closely tied to the Maoists, had been found at the scene taking responsibility for the attack.

However, a spokesman for the group, Asit Mahato, denied any role, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.