India: Desperate relatives searched Sunday for loved ones missing after India's worst train disaster in decades, and the death toll was expected to climb above 288 as authorities searched for clues to the cause.
Debris was piled high at the site of Friday night's crash near Balasore, in the eastern state of Odisha, with compartments smashed and the blood-stained wreckage of some carriages flung far from the tracks.
"I saw bloodied scenes, mangled bodies and one man with a severed arm being desperately helped by his injured son," researcher Anubhav Das, 27, told AFP after surviving the crash.
There was confusion about the exact sequence of events, but reports cited railway officials as saying that a signalling error had sent the Coromandal Express running south from Kolkata to Chennai onto a side track.
It slammed into a freight train and the wreckage derailed an express running north from India's tech hub Bengaluru to Kolkata that was also passing the site.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the crash site and injured passengers being treated in hospital and said "no one responsible" would be spared. "I pray that we get out of this sad moment as soon as possible," he told state broadcaster Doordarshan.
A high school close to the crash site had been turned into a makeshift morgue, but officials said many of the bodies were so disfigured that many of the distraught families could only spot their loved ones by pieces of jewellery.
"There were bodies with only a torso, an entirely burnt face, disfigured skull and no other visible identity markers left," said Ranajit Nayak, the police officer in charge of releasing the bodies.
In sweltering heat, many of the bodies were being transferred to bigger centres and officials suggested some would only be identified by DNA testing.
'Death and grief' - Das said he was in the last carriage of one of the trains when he heard "screeching, horrifying sounds coming from a distance". His coach stayed upright and he jumped out unhurt after it ground to a halt.
"I lost count of the bodies before leaving the site. Now I feel almost guilty," he said.
Bystanders rushed to help the victims even before emergency services arrived. "There were severed arms, legs, and even some partially severed heads -- while the unluckier ones died in pain, too much pain," said witness Hiranmay Rath.
Over the next few hours the 20-year-old saw "more death and grief" than he could have "ever imagined", he told AFP.
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