KARACHI - A passenger train smashed into a cargo train on the outskirts of Pakistan's financial capital Karachi on Tuesday, killing up to 14 people including women and children, authorities said."We have received 14 bodies, including three children and three women, and there are more than 45 injured," doctor Seemi Jamali of Jinnah Hospital told AFP. Most of the casualties were in the passenger train.
Police and rescue workers said they were still working to retrieve bodies and survivors from the wreckage of the passenger train hours after the crash.
"So far we have recovered the bodies of 12 passengers and rescued 38 injured people and sent them to hospitals," Muzaffar Shaikh, a senior railway police official, told AFP earlier in the afternoon.
Police suspected three or four more bodies were still trapped inside one of the carriages, he said.
"We are also hearing the cries of a child and are trying to locate him," Shaikh said.
The accident took place at Juma Goth, in the suburbs of Karachi, when the driver of the Karachi-bound Allama Iqbal express ignored a traffic signal and collided with the goods train, senior railway official Aftab Memon said.
Most of the casualties occurred in one passenger coach of the train, which was coming from the eastern city of Lahore, he said.
Pakistan suffered its worst train disaster in more than a decade in 2005 when three trains ploughed into each other in southern Sindh province, killing around 150 people. More than 350 people were killed in a 1990 train smash.