The death toll from India’s rail disaster rose to 142 on Monday after workers toiled through the night removing victims from the wreckage, with grim warnings that more bodies were trapped inside.

There was little hope of finding survivors among the mangled remains of 14 carriages, which came off the tracks on Sunday in a rural district of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

“The actual toll will still be higher and it would be a difficult task to identify all the persons, particularly those whose bodies are very badly damaged,” a senior local government official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“We do not have an exact figure for the injured as of now. Rescue work is still going on,” said district police chief Zaki Ahmad as workers cleared the most severely damaged carriages.

More than 2,000 people are believed to have been on the train, though many were travelling without reserved seats — or without tickets at all — making a precise estimate impossible.

“It is difficult to say how many people were exactly traveling but it was definitely over 2,000,” said a spokesman for the regional railway network.

Emergency workers with sniffer dogs moved from carriage to carriage looking for signs of life as cranes and heavy machinery began moving sections of the wreckage.

A large crowd had gathered at the site, with many combing through the bags and clothes strewn across the area in hopes of finding clues to the fate of their loved ones.

Source: AFP