One killed in Nepal train crash

KATHMANDU - One man died and four were injured Monday when a train rammed into a tipper in southern Nepal on the Himalayan republic’s only railway line.

The accident occurred around 10.30 a.m. when the train, heading towards Nepal’s famed pilgrim town Janakpur from Jaynagar on the Indo-Nepal border, rammed into a tipper laden with sand that was streaking across the railway tracks in violation of signals.

Police said the body of an unidentified man has been retrieved while four injured passengers have been rushed to hospital. The toll could rise as police fear people were sitting on the roof of the rail engine and could have fallen down to their death.

An excavator was on its way to the accident site in Dhanusha district to separate the train from the mangled tipper and help searchers look for victims or survivors below the engine.

Nepal has just 59 km of rail tracks running from Jaynagar to Janakpur and the railway is mostly used by people of Indian origin to travel farther to India.

India has offered to upgrade Nepal’s railway while the Nepal government has been repeatedly asking China to link it to the Lhasa railway, the highest in the world, through Kathmandu valley.