Truck crash kills 85 pilgrims in India

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JODHPUR, (India), Sept 8 (AFP): Rescuers in India recovered the bodies of 85 people Saturday from the mangled wreckage of a truck that plunged into a ravine in one of the country's worst accidents in recent years, police said.
Some 200 pilgrims were crowded on the truck travelling to a religious fair in the desert state of Rajasthan in western India, and apart from the fatalities some 60 people were injured, many of them seriously, police said.
"People have been taken out of the gorge," said police superintendent Rupinder Singh in Rajsamand district, where the accident occurred after dark on Friday. "Eighty-five bodies have been recovered."
Police said they were trying to confirm the whereabouts of some 50 remaining passengers, adding that many of them were believed to have survived.
Anxious villagers thronged hospitals where the injured had been taken.
About 10 cranes were brought to the accident site overnight as rescuers using searchlights scrambled to find survivors and recover bodies.
After dawn Saturday the operation had been scaled back to recover the badly damaged truck, an AFP correspondent said, as survivors searched for their scattered belongings.
The truck driver lost control on a sharp bend in a mountainous region and smashed through a protective roadside wall, plunging into the 80-foot (25-metre) deep gorge, said Singh.
Television channels showed the injured attached to intravenous drips in hospital, including one boy in a blue shirt with a thick bandage around his head.
"We were travelling and suddenly the brakes failed," the boy told the Aaj Tak channel. "We were going for free."
Some villagers had already taken the bodies of their family members back home to perform last rites Saturday, while others were still trying to identify the dead.
At least three people were so badly mutilated in the accident that their remains were no longer identifiable, police said.
Rajasthan's home minister has asked district officials to investigate how the 10-wheel truck-meant for hauling cars and heavy equipment-was allowed to transport people.