Train derailments are rare, but despite efforts to improve safety, collisions and other accidents still happen.
India’s deadly rail crash on Friday was the latest in a string of accidents involving the country’s railways, which transport more than 12 million people every day.
Despite the government’s efforts to improve rail safety, several hundred accidents occur on Indian railways every year. Most are attributed to human error or outdated signaling equipment.
Here’s a look at other rail accidents in India over the past few decades, as well as some of the world’s worst rail disasters of the past 10 years.
India:
October 2018 – A train slammed into a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India, killing at least 60 people and injuring dozens more, on the outskirts of Amritsar, a city in the Punjab state.
November 2016 – At least 146 people were killed when a passenger train between the towns of Indore and Patna skidded off the tracks. More than 200 people were injured.
July 2011 – A passenger train jumped the tracks near Fatehpur in northern India’s Uttar Pradesh state, killing 68 people and injuring 239 passengers.
May 2010 – A passenger train derailed and was hit by a freight train, killing 145 people in the state of West Bengal. Authorities blamed sabotage by Maoist rebels as the cause of the crash.
October 2005 – A passenger train plunged into a rain-swollen river in southern India, killing at least 111 people. About 100 injured passengers were rescued from coaches that derailed after floods washed away tracks in the Andhra Pradesh city of Veligonda.
September 2002 – An express train traveling from Kolkata to New Delhi jumped off its tracks and plunged into a river, killing at least 121 people. The accident happened south of Patna, the capital of Bihar state.
August 1999 – Two trains collided head-on in the city of Guwahati in Assam state, killing more than 285 people.
November 1998 – Two trains collided in the northern town of Khanna, killing 210 people. The crash happened when a passenger train hit cars uncoupled from another train.
August 1995 – Two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people. One of the trains had stopped after hitting a cow.
World:
February 2023 – A head-on collision between a freight train and a passenger train on the route between the Greek capital Athens and Thessaloniki killed 57 people in the country’s worst rail crash.
March 2022 – A cargo train carrying stowaways derailed in Lualaba province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing at least 75 people and injuring 125 others. A month later, at least eight people died when a freight train derailed in the same area.
June 2021 – At least 63 people were killed when a train hurtling through farmland derailed and collided with another passenger service in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province.
April 2021 – At least 49 people were killed and 200 injured in Taiwan when a passenger train collided with a truck that slid off an embankment near the town of Hualien. This was the island’s worst train disaster in decades.
October 2019 – At least 74 people died and more than 40 were injured when a fire broke out on an overcrowded passenger train carrying pilgrims to a religious gathering near the Pakistani city of Lahore.
October 2016 – A train traveling from Yaounde, Cameroon’s capital, to the economic center of Douala derailed, killing at least 79 people and injuring about 550 others. It was traveling “abnormally” fast before the crash, the crash investigation concluded.
April 2014 – A freight train carrying hundreds of illegal passengers derailed in a swampy and inaccessible part of the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing at least 136 people. Many had to be buried in mass graves nearby.
July 2013 – About 80 people were killed and about 140 injured in Spain when a high-speed train crashed into a concrete wall near the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela on July 24, 2013. The train was approaching a curve at more than twice the speed limit.