At least 120 people were killed and scores injured in Pakistan yesterday when a passenger train crashed into another at a station and a third train then ploughed into the wreckage, police said.

“I was sleeping. I woke up at the noise of a huge bang and then there was big jerk and smoke all over the place,” said a distraught injured passenger, Mohammad Amin. “There was total darkness ... I hit the floor and fainted,” said Amin who was desperately searching for a son. An express train coming from the eastern city of Lahore rammed into the rear of the Quetta Express stopped at Ghotki station for repairs, police said.

A third train, coming the other way, from Karachi, then ploughed into some of the derailed carriages, police said. Ghotki, a small town in southern Sindh province, is 430 km (270 miles) northeast of Karachi. A Reuters photographer said he saw about 50 blood-soaked bodies lying near the scene of the crash while many injured were being treated nearby. Police said they had recovered 120 bodies and more were in the wreckage.

“I just can’t give an exact death toll because a number of bodies are still in the wreckage but it is between 120 and 150,” Ghotki police chief Agha Mohammad Tahir told Reuters. “It is a very severe accident.” Nineteen carriages were derailed in all. President Pervez Musharraf had ordered an inquiry, media reported, but Pakistan Railways officials ruled out a technical fault, instead pointing the finger of blame at the driver of the train that rammed the stationary one.

“What we know is it was not a technical error but the accident occurred because of human error,” Pakistan Railways general manager Abdul Wahab told Geo television. Senior railway official Junaid Qureshi agreed. “He either ignored the red signal or he was snoozing,” Qureshi told Reuters, referring to the driver, whom he said was among the dead. Debris including luggage from the smashed compartments was scattered across a wide area as rescuers picked their way through twisted piles of metal and wood.

Passengers, some of them injured, could also be seen searching for missing friends and relatives. “It’s a disaster, very clearly the result of negligence,” said provincial government spokesman Salahuddin Haider. “How can two trains be allowed to run on the same track?” he said, referring to the trains involved in the initial crash.

“Why was one train not stopped from coming on when one train was already standing there for repairs?” A military spokesman said troops had reached the crash site and were helping to evacuate people and get the injured to hospital. Helicopters had been called to help move the injured. At least 122 injured people had been taken to three hospitals, the spokesman said.

In Pakistan’s worst train crash, 307 people were killed and 400 injured in January 1990 when a packed passenger train smashed into a freight train, also in Sindh province. A train crash in Punjab province killed 136 people in March 1997.

<B>Jehangir KHAN</B>

CHRONOLOGY

<B>Some deadly train disasters</B>

● April 25, 2005: 107 killed when a commuter train jumps the tracks north of Tokyo and slams into an apartment building.

● Dec. 26, 2004: up to 2,000 people die in train in Sri Lanka swamped by the South Asian tsunami.

● April 22, 2004: two trains collide and explode in a North Korea train station near the Chinese border, killing at least 161 and destroying thousands of homes.

● Feb. 18, 2004: runaway train cars carrying fuel and industrial chemicals derail, setting off explosions that destroy five villages in Neyshabur, Iran; at least 200 killed.

● Feb. 20, 2002: overcrowded train en route from Cairo to the southern Egyptian city of Luxor bursts into flames. At least 360 killed.

● Aug. 2, 1999: two express trains collide head-on in Gauhati, India, killing more than 285.

● Aug. 20, 1995: speeding passenger train crashes into a train that had stalled after hitting a cow in Firozabad, India; 358 killed.

● Sept. 22, 1994: faulty brakes cause a train to plunge into a ravine in Tolunda, Angola, killing 300.

● Jan. 4, 1990: overcrowded 16-car passenger train strikes standing freight train in Sindh Province, Pakistan. killing more than 210.

● June 3, 1989: explosion of liquefied gas pipeline engulfs two Trans-Siberian Railroad trains parked outside the Central Asian city of Ufa in what was then the Soviet Union; 575 die.

● June 8, 1991: A train carrying 800 passengers from Karachi to Lahore slammed into a parked freight train at Ghotki, Pakistan, killing more than 100 people.

● December 1989, a train crash near Sangi, a town 35 miles from Ghotki, killed 400 people.

● June 6, 1981: train crashes after bridge collapses in flash floods during monsoon in Bihar, India, killing more than 800.