KARACHI, Pakistan - Three passenger trains crashed in a chain-reaction pileup in a southern Pakistan station early Wednesday, killing at least 104 people and injuring hundreds of others, officials said.

Pakistan's deadliest train wreck in more than a decade left the station yard covered with twisted steel from at least 13 derailed cars. Officials said body parts were strewn about and emergency crews had to cut through metal to reach some victims.

"It is a very gruesome situation," police chief Agha Mohammed Tahir told The Associated Press. "Rescue workers have started to pull the dead and injured out. There were many people inside and there are a lot of casualties."

Survivors described being awoken to the horror after being thrown from their beds and seats.

"We were sleeping and we woke up to a huge bang," Suraya, a 22-year-old woman who like many Pakistanis goes by just one name, told The Associated Press by telephone. "I fell down to the floor. Then I heard the screams."

Ghulam Mohammed Muhtarim, the home secretary of Sindh province, said 104 bodies had been pulled from the wreckage. More than 100 people with serious injuries were admitted to hospitals, and scores more who had more minor injuries were treated at the scene, he said.

Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, the national head of the Crisis Management Center at the Interior Ministry, ruled out sabotage, saying the crash was "a pure accident."

The crash started about 4 a.m. when a train sitting in a station near the Sindh province city of Ghotki was hit in the rear by a second train, the Karachi Express. A third, oncoming train then slammed into cars derailed in the first crash, said Abdul Aziz, a senior controller at Pakistan Railways.

Chaudhry Nazir Ahmed, a railroad official in Ghotki, said about a thousand people were believed to be traveling in the three trains.

Khuda Bakhsh Larak, 50, who was in the Quetta Express and suffered head injuries and a broken leg, said by phone: "Our train was standing still when it was hit from the rear. Our car jumped and flipped on its side."

Naveed Zubairi, a cameraman for Associated Press Television News who happened to be traveling on the Karachi Express with his family, described a scene of confusion following the collision.

"My children were crying in the darkness. Then I made some light with my mobile phone to look around. There were injured people nearby," he said. "I went out of the carriage. Four carriages of another train on an adjacent track had fallen on one side and people in them were shouting for help. They were breaking windows to get out."

Zubairi suffered minor head injuries.

Some 30 bodies and over 100 injured people were taken to the Civil Hospital in the nearby town of Sukkur, said Iqbal Ahmed, a doctor there. He said at least 12 of the injured were in critical condition, and that some had lost limbs or suffered massive head injuries.

Abdul Wahab Awan, general manager of Pakistan Railways, said the driver of the Karachi Express misread a signal.

"The crash occurred because of misreading of a signal by the driver of Karachi Express and it rammed the Quetta Express, which was not moving," Awan told The Associated Press.

The injured were taken in ambulances and private car to area hospitals. Special trains were being sent to take stranded survivors to their destinations, officials said.

Ghotki is about 370 miles northeast of Karachi, in remote Sindh province.

The Quetta Express was carrying passengers from the eastern city of Lahore to the southwestern city of Quetta when it developed a technical problem and stopped at the station.

Technicians were working on the train when the Karachi Express, a night-coach from Lahore traveling to the southern port city of Karachi plowed into it.

The impact pushed cars onto an adjacent track where they were hit by the oncoming Tezgam Express, which was taking passengers from Karachi north to Rawalpindi, near the capital of Islamabad.

Pakistan's railways are antiquated, and dozens of people have been killed in train accidents in recent years. Ghotki has been a particularly dangerous point in the network and the site of repeated accidents over the years.

A train carrying 800 passengers from Karachi to Lahore slammed into a parked freight train at Ghotki on June 8, 1991, killing more than 100 people. Authorities blamed staff negligence for that accident.

In December 1989, a train crash near Sangi, a town 35 miles from Ghotki, killed 400 people.

Can we just nuke the whole fucking planet and start over, what the hell is going on these days.

PREDOMINANT said:

Yeah, but no humans next time around.

Cloudbuster said:

We could work that into the seed gene pool for the new planet

It would be a beautiful place!!

PREDOMINANT said:

Indeed it would.

And then he got killed

PANDURITO said:

why you gotta go and do that Pandy?

EarthAirFireWater said:

it was actually an interesting remark. why did some one with these strong beautiful thoughts have to be killed?

dawntreader said:

I've been thinking about that, and you're right it is interesting... and to answer I don't know

EarthAirFireWater said:

well thanks for posting the lyrics in any case!

dawntreader said:

m

So sad.

EarthAirFireWater said:

This is one of my favourite songs ever. A world such as this would be beautiful, but it will never happen? Why?? Because there are far too many religious fanatics in this world. If we could put an end to religion, the world would be a beauiful place indeed!