At least 58 dead after train mows down crowd attending Indian festival

At least 60 people celebrating Dussehra were killed after a train ran over hundreds standing on a railway track in Amritsar this evening.

As Ravan's effigy - located very close to the tracks at Jaura Phatak - was lit and fireworks went off, a section of the crowd retreated towards the tracks, where a large number of people were already standing to watch the celebrations.

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The people who were hit could not see or hear the train due to the exploding crackers. An angry crowd shouted slogans against local legislator Navjot Kaur Sidhu, who was present as chief guest during the event. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has ordered an inquiry into the accident.

The body of a victim of a train accident lies covered in cloth on a railway track in Amritsar, India, Friday, Oct. 19, 2018. A speeding train ran over a crowd watching fireworks during a religious festival in northern India on Friday, killing at least 50 people, a Congress party leader said.

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Culled from NDTV

My view: This is terrible, it's so sad even children were killed. Was the train driver asleep? It's impossible for the driver to miss not seeing a crowd of over 300 people on the tracks with light from the burning ravana. Why didn't the government provide security to control the crowd and prevent them from standing on the train tracks?, it is always ordinary people that suffer from horrible accident like this, why was the festival located close to the rail tracks.