The rescue and recovery operation has ended and movement of trains through the accident site has resumed.

A passenger train has crashed into a cargo train in central India, killing at least 11 people.

The local passenger train collided with a cargo train from behind near the city of Bilaspur, approximately 115km (70 miles) northeast of the capital of Chhattisgarh state, Raipur, on Tuesday afternoon, according to senior government official Sanjay Agarwal, who spoke with The Associated Press news agency. One of the passenger carriages ended up on top of a wagon from the cargo train, Agarwal added.

The rescue team brought the carriage down to the ground after hours of work and used iron cutters to cut it open, finding another three dead bodies, he said.

The rescue and recovery operation ended early on Wednesday, and movement of trains through the accident site has resumed, the official said.

Among those declared dead was the driver of the passenger train. His female co-driver was critically injured and admitted to a private hospital, Agarwal said. About 20 people were injured in the accident and are being treated at local hospitals.

In a statement, the operator, Indian Railways, said an inquiry into the cause of the accident had been started. It also announced financial aid for families of the deceased and the injured.

Chhattisgarh’s highest elected official, Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai, offered his condolences to the bereaved families.

Train collisions are not uncommon in India. More than 12 million people travel on the country’s 14,000 trains each day across 64,000km (about 40,000 miles) of track. Despite government efforts to improve rail safety, hundreds of accidents – some deadly – occur annually and are often blamed on human error or outdated signalling systems.

A crash in the eastern state of Odisha in 2023 killed at least 288 people in what was one of India’s deadliest train disasters.

Other forms of transport can also be perilous. Last month, a passenger bus erupted in flames after a crash with a motorcycle, killing at least 25 people and injuring several others in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. (Aljazeera)