Funerals begin as Mirpurkhas mourns victims of Tezgam fire – Pakistan

Distressed relatives gathered on Friday for the first funerals of some of the 73 people who died when the fire swept through a crowded train in Pakistan, with many of the victims living in a single city.

The sobbing family crowded an official building in Mirpurkhas during the night when the first bodies covered in white cloth began arriving by ambulance from the scene of the disaster.

After the morning prayers, with women watching from the nearby rooftops, more than a hundred men attended the first funeral of an auto mechanic named Mohammad Saleem, who was just over 40 years old.

It was held at the Bismillah Mosque, from which at least 42 pilgrims had left to board the train a day earlier bound for a religious holiday near Lahore.

Authorities say that while some of the train passengers prepared breakfast at dawn on Thursday, two of their gas cylinders exploded, sending flames through three cars when the train passed near Rahim Yar Khan, in the province of Punjab.

At least 73 people died, some after jumping through the windows of the train that still moves to escape the fire. Local media reported that rescue officers found bodies and some people injured along a two-kilometer stretch.
Dozens more were injured and taken to nearby hospitals.

One of the carriages, Car No. 12, primarily transported people from Mirpurkhas, said the city's deputy commissioner, Attaullah Shah. AFP.

"There has never been such a tragic incident in Mirpurkhas," he said.

Eight of the bodies had been confirmed as city residents so far, he said. Twenty-four residents of Mirpurkhas were among the injured. But at least another 40 are still missing, he said.

Rahim Yar Khan officials have said that many of the bodies are charred without recognition and will have to be identified through DNA testing, a process that could take up to a month.

Shah said the government was making arrangements to send the families of the disappeared from Mirpurkhas to Rahim Yar Khan's hospital, where the bodies were transferred.

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Mirpurkhas, a town of approximately half a million people surrounded by farms and mango orchards, was largely closed on Friday because the companies mourned.

"They were people who can never forget them," said Mohammad Anwar, director of a 57-year-old government school. AFP in the mosque of Bismillah.

He said that among his missing was his nephew, as well as the imam of the mosque. Most of those who left the mosque knew each other or lived nearby.

Yawar Hussain arrived at the deputy commissioner's office overnight in the hope of finding his 20-year-old brother Mohsin.

Grabbing a photograph of his brother wearing a starched beige shalwar kameez and sunglasses, the 23-year-old described that he ran home after learning of the accident.

"I comforted my father and my mother and my sisters were crying," he said.

Train accidents are common in Pakistan, where railroads have seen decades of decline due to corruption, mismanagement and lack of investment.

It is assumed that gas cylinders are prohibited on trains. Railroad Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed said Thursday that it had been a "mistake" to allow cylinders on board, and Prime Minister Imran Khan ordered an investigation.

The train was the Tezgam, a daily express service that travels back and forth between the southern port city of Karachi and Rawalpindi, adjacent to Islamabad.

But on Thursday he was diverting to take pilgrims to the annual Tablighi Ijtema, one of the largest religious gatherings in Pakistan, where up to 400,000 people descend in a village of tents on the outskirts of Lahore to sleep, pray and eat together .