Up to 30 Feared Dead After Indian Train Torched

Up to 30 people are feared to have died on Wednesday after a train carrying Hindu activists was set on fire by unidentified men in western India, a local administration official said.

"It is difficult to undertake a head count because the bodies are badly charred," Jayanti Ravi, head of the district administration where the incident took place, said after visiting the scene.

"We are trying to get to a figure by talking to the relatives and it looks like the death toll could be around 30," she told Reuters, when contacted by telephone from New Delhi.

The activists were returning from the northern town of Ayodhya where hardline Hindus are gathering to build a temple on the ruins of a mosque which was destroyed a decade ago.

Officials said a group of unidentified men stopped the Sabarmati Express a short distance from Godhra station in the western state of Gujarat, and set fire to one of its coaches.

(China Daily February 28, 2002)