Panama sends condolences to India after train accident

The government of Panama sent its condolences to the “people of India” over Friday’s tragic train accident in the east of the Asian country, which killed at least 288 people and injured nearly 900, 56 of them seriously.

“The Government of Panama expresses its deepest condolences to the people of India for the loss of more than 200 human lives as a result of the June 2 train accident” in the eastern state of Odisha, Panama’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a tweet.

The chancellor of that Central American country, Janaina Tewaney Mencomo, who is of Indian origin on her father’s side, also stated on the same social network that she “deeply regrets the tragic train accident” and expressed her “deepest condolences to the relatives of the deceased and the injured”.

The accident took place on Friday afternoon in Balasore district of Odisha region when a passenger train derailed, after which another train ran into it. A third freight train was also involved in the accident.

The carriages were strewn and deformed along the tracks, forcing rescue crews to spend more than twelve hours cutting through metal to try to save the passengers alive or recover the bodies.

Rescue efforts ended today, but Indian authorities warned that the death toll could continue to rise due to the serious condition of some of the injured.

This is India’s worst rail accident of the 21st century, after an August 1999 crash between two trains in the northeastern state of Bengal also left 288 dead. About 800 people died in 1981 when a train derailed while crossing a bridge and plunged into a river in the northern state of Bihar.

The Indian railway network, with a length of 68,000 kilometers, is the fourth longest in the world, behind the United States of America, Russia and China, has about 21,650 trains and 7,349 stations throughout the country, and transports about 23 million passengers daily. passengers.