128 die as trains crash; Driver blamed for signal error.

Byline: BY LIAM CHRISTOPHER

THREE trains crashed in a deadly chain-reaction after a train driver misread a signal in southern Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 128 people and injuring hundreds more. It was the country's worst crash in more than a decade.

The night-time accident jolted passengers awake to a horrifying smash that left metal, glass and body parts strewn across a remote railway station near Ghotki.

Rescuers frantically cut through twisted metal to reach survivors, as ambulances and buses ferried the injured to nearby hospitals.

'We woke up to a huge bang,' said Suraya, a 22-year-old woman who like many Pakistanis goes by just one name. 'I fell to the floor. Then I heard the screams.'

At the scene, villagers and surviving passengers - some splattered with blood - peered into the wreckage looking for victims. Massive train wheels, springs and other train parts ripped from carriages were scattered between the tracks.

Carriages lay on their sides Others were crumpled into heaps of twisted metal. Bodies of victims were wrapped in white cloth and piled together.

'It is a very gruesome situation,' local police chief Agha Mohammed Tahir said. He said 128 people had died.

Abdul Wahab Awan, general manager of Pakistan Railways, said hundreds more were injured Awan blamed the driver of the Karachi Express for misreading a signal and smashing into the back of another passenger train, the Quetta Express.

Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf, offered his condolences to the injured and the families of those killed, and promised that anyone guilty of negligence would be prosecuted

CAPTION(S):

A train on its side as passengers are ferried away Picture: PERVES MASIH