The world's worst rail disasters in recent decades

Most of the crashes have occurred in India where more than 12 million people travel on 14,000 trains daily

Rescue workers gather around damaged carriages at the site of a three-train collision near Balasore in Odisha. AFP

Almost 300 people were killed and 900 injured when two express passenger trains and one for freight collided in the eastern state of Odisha state on Friday night. It is one of India’s worst train crashes.

The world's deadliest rail disaster occurred in Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004, when tsunami waves hit the Queen of The Sea train, killing more than 1,700 people.

The train was submerged and destroyed by two waves causing the death of passengers who were packed in eight carriages.

It was the world's worst railway accident and surpassed the Bihar train disaster in India in 1981, when a train fell off a bridge, drowning about 800 people.

Here are some of the world's other train disasters in recent times:

February 28, 2023: Fifty-seven people died when a freight train and a passenger train collided on the route between Athens and Thessaloniki, in Greece's worst rail accident.

March 10, 2022: A freight train carrying illegal passengers derailed in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Lualaba province, killing at least 75 people and injuring 125 others. A similar incident in the south of the country on April 22, 2014, resulted in the deaths of at least 136 people.

June 7, 2021: At least 63 people died when two passenger trains collided in Pakistan's southern Sindh province.

April 2, 2021: At least 49 people were killed and 200 injured when a passenger train collided with a lorry that slid down an embankment near the Taiwanese city of Hualien.

October 31, 2019: At least 74 people died and more than 40 were injured when a fire broke out in a train carrying pilgrims near Lahore, Pakistan.

October 19, 2018: At least 60 people were killed and several injured when a train ran over a crowd watching fireworks on the outskirts of the northern Indian city of Amritsar.

November 20, 2016: At least 146 people died and more than 200 were injured when a passenger train travelling between the Indian cities of Indore and Patna slid off the tracks in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

July 30, 2012: More than 30 people were killed when a Delhi-Chennai Tamil Nadu Express coach caught fire in the southern Indian city of Nellore.

July 10, 2011: At least 68 people were killed and 239 injured when a passenger train jumped off the tracks in Uttar Pradesh state in northern India.

May 28, 2010: At least 145 people were killed when a passenger train derailed and was hit by a cargo train in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.

October 29, 2005: At least 111 people were killed and about 100 injured when a passenger train plunged into a rain-swollen river in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.

September 9, 2002: At least 121 people were killed when an express train travelling from the Indian city of Kolkata to New Delhi jumped off the tracks and plunged into a river.

August 2, 1999: More than 285 people were killed when two trains collided head-on in the north-eastern Indian city of Guwahati.

November 26, 1998: More than 210 people were killed when two trains collided in the northern Indian city of Khanna.