By LUCY OGALUE

The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has confirmed safety of 14 more passengers on board the attacked Abuja-Kaduna train of March 28, bringing the total safe passengers to 186.

The NRC’s Managing Director, Mr Fidet Okhiria, confirmed this in a statement he issued on Sunday.

“The statement is aimed at updating Nigerians on the on-going development regarding the clearing of the incident site (recovery of the rolling stock, repairs of the track) and status of Passengers that were on-board the AK9 train of Monday, March 28.

“Of the 362 validated passengers on board the attacked AK9 train service on March 28, 186 persons on the manifest are confirmed to be safe and at their various homes (additional 14 persons confirmed safe today),” Okhiria said.

He said 51 phone numbers on the manifest are either switched off or not reachable since Tuesday morning and 35 phone numbers on the manifest are ringing, but no response from the other end.

He stated that 60 phone numbers on the manifest when called, response non-existent, 22 persons are reported missing by their relatives and eight persons confirmed dead.

According to Okhiria, two coaches (SP 00016 and SP 00017) earlier re-railed have safely been moved to Rigasa Station.

He said: “This brings the total number of recovered Coaches and safely moved to NRC Stations to be seven.

“Intensive work continues on track repairs. More concrete Sleepers were moved to site while some section of twisted tracks has been straightened.

“We remain grateful to the security agencies for all the support. We are very appreciative of the Squadron Commander MOPOL 1 Kaduna visit to the accident site today.

“The NRC will continue to update the general public of developments to prevent misleading information and falsehood,” the NRC boss added. (NAN)

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