Domeli: Pakistani investigators believe saboteurs tampered with a section of railway track, causing a train to plunge into a ravine and killing at least four people.
Experts found nuts on the track had been unscrewed when they examined the site of Sunday's crash near the city of Jhelum in the eastern province of Punjab, Railways Minister Ishaq Khakwani said.
Six carriages of the express jumped the rails and three fell into the 50-foot gully around two hours after the Lahore-bound train left Rawalpindi, a city adjoining Islamabad.
"It is almost confirmed now that it is an act of sabotage. The evidence says it is sabotage," Khakwani said.
"We have seen spanners, the nuts of the fish plates were open," he added, referring to a key track part used to join different rail sections.
The minister would not speak in detail about who might have sabotaged the track but said "several elements" could have been involved, adding: "It could be internal, it could be external."
The suspected sabotage also targeted a crucial area. "Such a derailment in a hilly area could have caused greater loss but luckily there were not many casualties," he said.
The death toll rose on Monday to four, two of whom were women, while 94 people were injured, 10 of them seriously, railway police chief Zaheer Ahmed said. Officials said Sunday that three people had died.
The rest of the estimated 400 passengers in the stricken coaches survived and it was a miracle that more were not killed, said Major General Shaukat Sultan, President Pervez Musharraf's spokesman.
Tariq Masood, a rescue worker from a private relief organisation, said there were "fears it could be sabotage". "People say the track was damaged, its fish plates were removed," he said at the crash site early on Monday.
Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who expressed grief over the loss of lives in the Jhelum crash, have ordered an inquiry.
Tribal militants from the southwestern province of Baluchistan have carried out a series of bombings on railway lines since January 2004, although the attacks have largely been confined to Baluchistan itself.
However in a separate incident on Sunday suspected rebels blew up a stretch of track in Shadan-Lund, which is also in Punjab but about 400 kilometers southwest of Jhelum, 40 minutes before a passenger train was due to pass, police said.
In April seven people were injured when a bomb blamed on Baluch militants exploded on the same train, the Chiltan Express.
The rebels are demanding more revenues from Baluchistan's natural resources and increased political rights.
Accidents on Pakistan's ageing and overcrowded railway system have themselves claimed hundreds of lives in recent years.
Pakistan suffered its worst train disaster in more than a decade last July when three trains ploughed into each other at Ghotki in the southern province of Sindh, killing around 150 people.
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