Seven wild Asiatic elephants were killed and a calf was injured when a high-speed passenger train collided with a herd crossing the tracks in India’s northeastern state of Assam early Saturday, local authorities said.
The train driver spotted the herd of about 100 elephants and used the emergency brakes, but the train still hit some of the animals, Indian Railways spokesman Kapinjal Kishore Sharma told The Associated Press.
Five train coaches and the engine derailed following the impact, but there were no human casualties, Sharma said.
Veterinarians carried out autopsies on the dead elephants, which were to be buried later in the day.
The accident site is a forested area around 78 miles southeast of Assam’s capital city of Guwahati. Railway tracks in the state are frequented by elephants, but Indian Railways said in a statement the accident location wasn’t a designated elephant corridor. Trains that pass through the country’s 150 wildlife corridors are under government orders to reduce speed to prevent collisions.
Anupam Nath / AP
The Rajdhani Express train, traveling from Sairang in Mizoram state bordering Myanmar, was bound for the national capital of New Delhi with 650 passengers onboard when it hit with elephants.
“We delinked the coaches which were not derailed, and the train resumed its journey for New Delhi. Around 200 passengers who were in the five derailed coaches have been moved to Guwahati in a different train,” Sharma said.
Speeding trains hitting wild elephants is not rare in Assam, which is home to an estimated 7,000 wild Asiatic elephants, one of the highest concentrations of the pachyderm in India. Since 2020, at least a dozen elephants have been killed by speeding trains across the state. 20 elephants are killed in train accidents every year on average, according to Indian government data. The deaths usually happen when elephants cross railway lines that run through their habitats.
The country recently opened an elephant hospital in Mathura. The southern state of Tamil Nadu has also launched an artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled surveillance system meant to help prevent elephant deaths on railways.
Wild elephants often stray into human habitations this time of year, when rice fields are ready for harvesting.