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Angry parents staged a demonstration Saturday on the railroad tracks, where a high-speed train struck crowds celebrating a Hindu festival, killing about 60 people in northern India.
The express Jalandhar-Amritsar hit many revelers who had gathered along the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Amritsar, in the state of Punjab Friday watch a fireworks.
Most of the victims were dismembered without any recognition and the police said it would take several days to complete the identification of the dead.
Some desperate parents went from hospital to hospital in the city Saturday in search of missing children, while the first funerals of some victims took place.
Hardeep Singh, Chief Medical Officer of Amritsar, told the AFP news agency that 59 dead had been confirmed and 90 injured, including seven in critical condition.
Singh said that only 25 bodies had been identified so far. The main hospital of Amritsar did not have enough room in his morgue and corpses were deposited outside.
Train not heard
The disaster has brought new demands for reforming the safety of India's crash-hit railway system, which is killing thousands every year.
Punjab State Governor V.P. Singh Badnore said: "Those who must be punished will be punished and the responsibility will be corrected".
Dozens of protesters who rallied on the railroad tracks condemned the Punjab state government and called for measures against the driver who was questioned by police on Saturday. Others have blocked a nearby road.
The police took protesters off the runways and brought in reinforcements to control a crowd of hundreds of people gathered around the scene of the disaster.
Investigators said the victims did not hear the train because the locomotive drone had been drowned by firecrackers. Another train had narrowly missed the crowd two minutes earlier, officials said.
According to media reports, the driver reportedly told the police that he had not seen the revelers before the last second because he had gone through a dark bend in the fireworks smoke.
While the game of accusations was spreading, the police announced that it had authorized the display of the annual fireworks festival of Dussehra, but that the organizers had not obtained the Approval of the city, health service or fire department.
The Indian Railways stated that they had not been informed of the celebration, although the locals said it had been in the same place for several years.
According to the media, the organizers, members of the Congress party that heads Punjab, have been hiding.
Railway Minister Piyush Goyal returned early after a trip to the United States to visit Amritsar on Saturday. Punjab Prime Minister Amarinder Singh canceled his trip to Israel to visit the scene of the disaster.
The huge Indian rail network is renowned for its accidents.
A 2012 government report described the loss of 15,000 passengers as a result of rail accidents each year in India as a "massacre". The government has committed $ 137 billion over five years to modernize this crumbling network.
In 1981, seven cars from one train fell into a river while they were crossing a bridge in the state of Bihar, in the east of the country, killing between 800 and 1,000 people .
But almost every month, there are accidents involving trains that derail or hit vehicles at railway crossings.
In April, 13 children were killed when a train fell on their school bus. In November 2016, the Patna-Indore express train derailed in the state of Uttar Pradesh in the middle of the night, killing 139 people.
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