Aizawl
Various disaster response personnel continued their search operation for the second day on Thursday to recover more bodies in Mizoram’s Sairang area, where an under-construction railway bridge collapsed on Wednesday killing at least 23 people and injuring three, officials said. Aizawl District administration and Police officials on Thursday said that 23 workers were killed and 22 bodies recovered so far while two more workers and an engineer were injured and now under medical treatment in Aizawl hospital. Officials of Mizoram Relief and Disaster Management Department on Wednesday said that at least 26 workers were killed and two others injured after the railway bridge collapsed near the mountainous Sairang area, about 21 km from Aizawl. A Mizoram government statement said that the Quick Response Team (QRT) along with National and State Disaster Response Force and Young Mizo Association volunteers continued their search operations. Officials said that most of the victims are from West Bengal’s Malda district. The Railway engineers said that the accident was due to the collapse of a gantry, which was being placed over the 104-metre piers of the under-construction bridge. The steel structure had suddenly toppled off towering columns into the forested valley below. The railway bridge under the 51.38-km railway project was under construction over the Kurung river to connect Bairabi (near southern Assam) to Sairang. A high-level committee has been constituted by the Railway Ministry to probe the incident, railway officials said. After the postmortem, the bodies are being embalmed and would be handed over to the Railway Department for transportation to respective native villages, the statement said. The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) has been implementing the 51.38-km railway project.
