23-year-old Gafur Sheikh was travelling from Calcutta when the tragic accident occurred. Photo: SUPPLIED
A man injured in a train smash in India says the hospital is overwhelmed and people are being treated on the floor.
At least 288 people were killed and 1000 injured when three trains collided, many of them seriously.
The cause of the crash, which was being described as India's worst this century, was not yet clear.
The collision in the state of Odisha was one of the country's worst rail disasters in decades.
New Zealander Jaimini Joshi, who has family in the state in the east of the country, said she spoke to a man about his brother who was badly injured in the crash.
She said 23-year-old Gafur Sheikh was travelling from Calcutta when the tragic accident occurred.
He suffered a severe head injury, lost a lot of blood and also hurt his eye.
He needed 15 stitches.
Joshi said there were no beds left at the hospital - and Sheikh was treated while sitting on the floor.
She said people were very angry and upset about the whole situation.
Photo: AFP / Dibyangshu Sarkar
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi was believed to have visited the hospital overnight New Zealand time, Joshi said.
Joshi said the community in New Zealand was waiting anxiously to learn if any of their loved ones were among the dead or injured.
She said the full picture was yet to emerge, and more should be known today.
"It is just such a big shock and it is a major incident and a lot of causalities."
Joshi said accidents happen regularly on India's massive rail network and she was sad the country did not appear to be learning from its mistakes.
An Indian community leader in New Zealand has called for the community to stand together and support each other after the devastating accident.
Chairman of the Dairy and Business Owners Group, Sunny Kaushal, said people were waiting for more information to come through.
"This is very sad news for the Indian community in New Zealand," he said.
"Our thoughts and prayers and condolences are with those who are dead, and also we are praying for the injured for a speedy recovery."
Kaushal said the community would rally together to provide whatever help they can.
How did three trains collide in Odisha?
India's Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who has been at the site of the accident, said "a high-level committee" will be set up to investigate the accident.
Vaishnaw's cabinet colleague Dharmendra Pradhan blamed "technical reasons" for the crash, describing it as "an unfortunate incident" that "shouldn't have happened".
An official said the inquiry would be headed by the commissioner of railway safety for the south-eastern circle - which includes Balasore district where the accident occurred.
Photo: JAYANTA SHAW / AFP
Full details of how it happened were still not available, but the railway ministry said the crash took place around 6:55pm local time on Friday near the Bahanaga Bazar station, about 270 kilometres south of Kolkata.
The accident involved three trains:
- Coromandel Express, which had started just hours before from Shalimar railway station in the state of West Bengal and was headed to the southern city of Chennai
- Howrah Superfast Express, which had started from Yesvantpur station in Bengaluru and was due to reach Howrah
- A stationary goods train, which was standing at the Bahanaga Bazar station
There were varying accounts of which train derailed first and how the collision happened. But railway spokesperson Amitabh Sharma said it was the Coromandel Express that derailed first.
A railway ministry official told the BBC that the Bahanaga Bazar station had four tracks.
"Lines 1 and 4 had goods trains parked on them. The passenger trains were running parallelly and simultaneously on track two and three. It's a matter of investigation why and how the Coromandel Express got derailed and hit the goods trains," he said.
He added that coaches from the derailed train fell onto the two rear coaches of the Howrah Superfast and derailed it too.
An Odisha government press release said that, in total, 17 coaches of the two passenger trains were derailed and severely damaged.
Villagers from the nearby area and eyewitnesses to the crash also spoke of three trains being involved in the crash.
Girija Shankar Rath, who lives near the station and was among the first people to reach the accident site, told BBC Hindi that the Coromandel Express derailed and hit the goods train parked on a nearby track from behind.
"There was total chaos and the whole area was engulfed in smoke. And then we saw Shalimar Express which came hurtling down and hit some of the Coromandel wreckage and two of its coaches also derailed," he said.
Another eyewitness, Tutu Biswas, said he came to the site when he heard a loud noise.
"Some of the coaches of the Coromandel Express had gone over the goods train," Biswas said.
"There were lots of injured people and bodies here. I met a young boy who had lost both his parents. He was crying and then he died too," he added.
Friday's crash was among the five deadliest accidents in the history of India's railways.
Atul Karwal, chief of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), said the force of the collision had left several coaches crushed and rescuers had to cut through the wreckage to reach the passengers.
Hundreds of ambulances, doctors, nurses and rescue personnel were sent to the scene and worked for 18 hours to rescue passengers and pull out bodies.
India has one of the largest train networks in the world.
It runs more than 12,000 passenger trains daily, which are used by tens of millions of passengers to travel across the country - but a lot of the railway infrastructure needs improving.
- RNZ with BBC