Distraught relatives gathered on Friday for the first funerals of some of the 74 people killed when fire ripped through a crowded train in Rahim Yar Khan, with many of the victims residents of a single town.
Sobbing family members crowded a government building in Mirpurkhas overnight as the first bodies covered in white cloth began arriving by ambulance from the scene of the disaster. After morning prayers, with women watching from nearby rooftops, more than a hundred men attended the first funeral – of a car mechanic named Saleem, who was in his late 40s.
It was held at the Bismillah Mosque, from which at least 42 pilgrims had left to board the train one day earlier, bound for a religious congregation near Lahore.
Officials say as some of the train’s passengers cooked breakfast around dawn Thursday, two of their gas cylinders exploded, sending flames racing through three carriages as the train passed near Rahim Yar Khan.
At least 74 people died, some after jumping through windows on the still-moving train to escape the blaze. Rescue officials found bodies and some injured passengers along a two-kilometre stretch of track.
Journalists were allowed inside the interior of the carriages early Friday. The fire appeared to have burned them entirely, with virtually no space visible that was not blackened and charred.
One of them – Wagon No 12 – was carrying mainly people from Mirpurkhas, Deputy Commissioner Attaullah Shah, said. “There was never such a tragic incident to happen to Mirpurkhas,” he said.
Eight of the bodies had been confirmed as being residents of the town so far, he said. Twenty-four Mirpurkhas residents were among the injured. But at least another 40 are still missing, he said.
Officials in Rahim Yar Khan have said at least 54 of the bodies are charred beyond recognition and will have to be identified through DNA testing – a process that could take up to one month.
Shah said the government is arranging to send families of the missing from Mirpurkhas to the hospital in Rahim Yar Khan where the bodies have been taken. Mirpurkhas was largely shut down Friday as businesses closed in mourning. “These were such people that we can not ever forget them,” Anwar, the 57-year-old headmaster of a government school, said at the Bismillah Mosque. He said that among the missing was his nephew, as well as the mosque’s imam. Most of those who left from the mosque had known one another or lived nearby.
Yawar Hussain came to the deputy commissioner’s office overnight in hopes of finding his brother Mohsin, 20. Clutching a photograph of his brother wearing a starched beige shalwar kameez and sunglasses, the 23-year-old described rushing home after hearing of the accident. “I consoled my father, and my mother and sisters were crying,” he said.
Meanwhile, relatives of victims of train fire struggled to identify their loved ones, with dozens of people burned beyond recognition and needing DNA testing to determine who they are, an official said.
Jameel Ahmad, a senior official in Rahim Yar Khan, said 57 of the victims were very badly burned. “Relatives of several people came to identify them but failed,” Ahmad said. “Now the government is collecting DNA samples.”
