Seven people were killed when an express passenger train and a goods train collided Monday in India’s West Bengal state, derailing three passenger carriages, police said.
Images on Indian broadcasters showed the tangled wreckage of carriages flipped on their side, and one thrust high into the air precariously balanced on another.
Police said rescuers were scouring the twisted carriages in case there were more bodies trapped beneath.
“We have confirmation of seven deaths and 39 passengers admitted at a local hospital with various injuries,” local police officer Iftikar-Ul-Hassan told AFP.
The incident is the latest to hit India’s creaking rail network, which carries millions of passengers each day.
“We just saw the bodies of a dead driver and a guard… their bodies were taken out,” Rajesh Kumar Singh, from the Railway Protection Force, told AFP.
“Some more bodies may be under the crash site, but we don’t yet know for sure.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his condolences to “those who lost their loved ones”, in a post on social media, adding that “rescue operations are underway”.
West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called the crash “tragic” in a post on social media.
“Doctors, ambulances and disaster teams have been rushed to the site for rescue, recovery, medical assistance,” Banerjee said. “Action on war footing initiated.”
Banerjee said the crash took place in the Phansidewa area of Darjeeling district, when the Kanchenjunga Express train was hit by a goods train.
Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the “injured are being shifted to the hospital”.
India has one of the world’s largest rail networks and has seen several disasters over the years, the worst in 1981 when a train derailed while crossing a bridge in Bihar state, killing an estimated 800 people.
In June last year, a three-train collision killed nearly 300 people in Odisha state.
In recent years, India has been investing huge sums of money to upgrade the network with modern stations and electronic signalling systems.
On Sunday, a train crossed for the first time the world’s highest railway bridge — 359 metres (1178 feet) above a river — in India’s Himalayan region, the railways minister Vaishnaw said.
The arch-shaped steel structure over the Chenab River links sections of northern Jammu and Kashmir state, connecting the disputed territory to the rest of India.
Work on the railway track has been ongoing for nearly three decades, and the trial run comes ahead of a formal opening expected within weeks.
AFP
The Israeli military announced on Wednesday it had struck two naval cruise missile production facilities operating under Iran’s ministry of defence in Tehran.
“In recent days, the Israeli air force acting on IDF intelligence struck two key naval cruise missile production sites in Tehran,” the military said.
It said the facilities were used to “develop and manufacture long-range naval cruise missiles, which are capable of rapidly destroying targets at sea and on land”.
The strikes “represent another step in deepening the damage done to the regime’s military production infrastructure”, the military added.
Last week, the military announced its fighter jets had struck several Iranian naval ships in the Caspian Sea, including vessels equipped with anti-submarine missiles.
AFP
The number of migrants who died on the “Eastern Route” from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula doubled to a record high of 922 last year, the UN migration agency said Wednesday.
Tens of thousands of migrants from Ethiopia, Somalia and neighbouring countries take the route across the Red Sea each year, mostly from Djibouti to Yemen, in search of work as labourers or domestic workers in wealthy Gulf countries.
“2025 was the deadliest year ever recorded on the Eastern migration route… with 922 people dead or missing — double the number from the previous year,” Tanja Pacifico, head of mission for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Djibouti, told AFP.
The majority of victims were from Ethiopia, the second most-populous country in Africa with more than 130 million people. It is plagued by multiple internal conflicts and deep poverty.
“IOM remains fully committed to working alongside the government of Djibouti to promote safe and dignified migration pathways, in order to prevent further tragedies,” said Pacifico.
Many migrants who cross the Red Sea find themselves stuck in Yemen, the poorest country on the Arabian Peninsula, which has been embroiled in a civil war for nearly a decade, and some even choose to return.
Rapid economic growth in Ethiopia — estimated to reach around 10 percent in 2026 — could encourage less migration, IOM says, but that is mitigated by high inflation, also around 10 percent in February.
AFP
Denmark’s political parties began the thorny process of forming a government Wednesday, with the centrist Moderates as kingmaker after the prime minister’s Social Democrats scraped through a general election without a majority.
Danes were braced for a weeks-long process as Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen seeks to consolidate power in the deeply splintered parliament after Tuesday’s snap vote.
A left-wing bloc made up of five parties, including Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, won 84 seats; the right-wing and far-right claimed 77; and the Moderates won 14 in the election.
The Social Democrats posted their worst election score since 1903—though they remained Denmark’s largest single party, with 38 seats in the 179-seat parliament.
Frederiksen formally tendered her coalition government’s resignation to King Frederik on Wednesday, telling a televised party leader debate she wanted to try to form a centre-left government.
“The most realistic scenario” would be a coalition with the five parties on the left and the centre-right Moderates, she said.
But it is not certain the Moderates, led by Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, would agree to that.
“I don’t believe that Denmark needs policies aligned with” the leftist Red-Green Alliance, Lokke said.
King Frederik was to meet party leaders individually later Wednesday to determine who should be asked to try to form the next government.
“My expectation is that Mette Frederiksen will become prime minister,” University of Copenhagen political science professor Rune Stubager told reporters.
“But I don’t know with the backing of which parties, like the left wing or the right wing,” he said.
He noted that Lokke, a two-time former prime minister, would likely vie for the position of prime minister, even though he has adamantly denied any interest in the job.
“Danes want me and not another prime minister. I still have the backing to be able to continue on behalf of the Danish people,” Frederiksen insisted during the debate.
Frederiksen has for the past four years headed an unprecedented left-right coalition made up of her Social Democrats, the Moderates and the Liberals.
The Liberals have refused to continue in a Social Democrat-led government.
Danes are now prepared for long negotiations. After the 2022 election, the talks lasted six weeks.
“It’s a long process, which means the government won’t be formed and it will be quite difficult to pass laws during this period,” lamented Jesper Dyrfjeld Christensen, a 54-year-old engineer.
“It’s really too hard to say who will be part of the coalition,” admitted Stubager.
With 12 parties in parliament, the political landscape is jagged — though Denmark is accustomed to minority governments.
“To some extent, this is the way Danish politics works. You have a minority government in the centre which forms a majority with the left on some issues and with the right on others,” he explained.
The negotiations are expected to focus on economic and pension issues, pollution and immigration, he said.
The traditional far-right party, the Danish People’s Party, which has heavily influenced policy since the late 1990s but slumped in the 2022 election, more than tripled its result to 9.1 per cent of votes.
The three anti-immigration groups together garnered 17 per cent, a stable figure for Denmark’s populist right over the past two decades.
“If negotiations take place in the left-wing bloc with the moderates, then there will be more focus on green issues than on immigration,” Stubager said.
“But if, instead, the Moderates negotiate with the parties on the right, then the central issue will be immigration.”
Four seats in Denmark’s parliament are held by its two autonomous territories — two for Greenland and two for the Faroe Islands.
While the Faroese renewed the mandates of the two outgoing lawmakers, with one for each bloc, Greenland overwhelmingly backed the left-wing party and Naleraq, which advocates rapid independence from Denmark.
AFP
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