- By Jaroslav Lukiv & George Wright
- BBC news
The footage shows rescuers trying to save the victims from the wreckage
At least 233 people are now known to have been killed and 900 injured in multiple train collisions in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, officials said.
More than 200 ambulances have been dispatched to the scene in Balasore district, said Odisha chief secretary Pradeep Jena.
A passenger train is believed to have derailed before hitting another on an adjacent track on Friday.
This is the worst train crash in India this century. Officials say the death toll is expected to rise.
Indian Railways said the two services involved were the Coromandel Express and the Howrah Superfast Express.
A total of 233 bodies have been recovered so far, Mr Jena said.
He said earlier that more than 100 additional doctors have been mobilized.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was saddened by the incident and his thoughts were with the bereaved families.
“Rescue ops are continuing at the accident site and all possible assistance is being provided to those affected,” he tweeted.
Meanwhile, Home Minister Amit Shah termed the incident as “very sickening”.
A man who survived said that “10 to 15 people fell on me when the accident happened and everything became chaotic. I was at the bottom of the pile.
“I hurt my hand and the back of my neck as well. When I got out of the train bogie, I saw that someone lost his hand, someone lost his leg, while someone’s face was distorted,” the survivor told India’s ANI news agency.
A day of mourning has been declared in the state.
It is believed that several carriages from the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express derailed at around 19:00 local time (13:30 GMT), with some of them ending up on the opposite track.
Another train – the Howrah Superfast Express traveling from Yesvantpur to Howrah – is thought to have been hit by overturned carriages.
Indian officials said a goods train – which had stopped at the site – was also involved in the incident. They did not provide further details.
Some rescued passengers were seen rushing in to help rescue those trapped in the wreckage.
Local bus companies are also helping to transport injured passengers.
India has one of the largest rail networks in the world and accidents are common, despite successive governments investing hundreds of millions of dollars to improve the infrastructure, says BBC South Asia regional editor Anbarasan Ethirajan.
India’s worst train disaster occurred in 1981, when an overcrowded passenger train was thrown off the tracks and into a river during a cyclone in Bihar state, killing at least 800 people.
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