Gura Pallay was watching another train pass by the one he was sitting in when he heard sudden, loud screeching. Before he could make sense of what was happening, he was thrown out of the train. Pallay, 24, landed next to the tracks along with metal wreckage of the train he’d been riding in, and instantly lost consciousness. The first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the twisted remains of three trains on the tracks. His train had derailed after colliding with a stopped freight train. Another passenger train, the one he had seen pass by moments earlier, had hit the derailed carriages. “I saw it with my own eyes, but I still can’t describe what I saw. I am haunted by it,” he said Sunday at a hospital, where he lay on a stretcher with a broken leg and dark wounds on his face and arms. Pallay is a laborer, like most of the people onboard the two passenger trains that crashed Friday in the eastern Odisha state, killing 275 people and injuring hundreds. He was traveling to Chennai city in southern India to take up a job in a paper mill factory when the Coromandel Express crashed with a goods freight train, knocking it off track, and was then hit by a second train coming from the opposite direction on a parallel track. Read: Error in signaling system led to train crash that killed 275 people in India, official says “I never imagined something like this could happen, but I guess it was our fate,” he said. Investigators said Sunday that a signaling failure might have caused the three-train crash, one of the worst rail disasters in the country’s history. Authorities recommended that India’s Central Bureau of Investigations, which probes major criminal cases, open an investigation into the crash. “We can’t bring back those we have lost, but the government is with the families in their grief. Whosoever is found guilty will be punished severely,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Saturday while visiting the site of the accident. The crash occurred as Modi’s government is focusing on the modernization of India’s British colonial-era railroad network. Several survivors of the crash said they were still struggling to comprehend the disaster. “Everything happened so quickly,” said Subhashish Patra, a student who was traveling with his family from Balasore to the state capital, Bhubaneswar, on the Coromandel Express. He was planning to take his mother to a hospital in Bhubaneswar to seek treatment for a hand injury, and then to travel to Puri, home to one of Odisha’s most important temples. Read: India’s deadly train crash renews questions over safety as government pushes railway upgrade The first thing Patra could make sense of after the crash was the sound of children crying. People were screaming for help in the dark, and around him lay corpses. “There were dead bodies all around me,” he said. Patra said the rail carriage he was in landed with the door facing upwards. He climbed onto a pile of wreckage inside the train and managed pull himself out. At the hospital on Sunday, Patra’s head was bandaged in gauze as he waited for an MRI scan. His head was throbbing with pain, he said, but he was grateful that he and his entire family had survived. Others weren’t so lucky. Alaudin, who goes by one name, travelled almost 200 kilometers (124.3 miles) Saturday from West Bengal state to the crash site, to look for his brother, who was onboard one of the trains. He learned about the crash from television. When he tried to call his brother’s mobile phone to check on him, no one answered. Worried, he and his sister-in-law rushed to the site of the crash afterwards and spent all of Saturday looking for him in various hospitals, hoping he would be alive. But his brother’s whereabouts remained unknown as the death toll continued to rise. Distraught, they finally made their way to the mortuary, where Alaudin’s brother body was wrapped in a black plastic bag and placed on top of blocks of melting ice. “I lost my brother, she lost her husband,” Alaudin said, pointing to his sister-in-law. “And his two boys have lost a father.” His brother was 36 years old, Alaudin said.  

A school teacher and a van driver were killed after a bus hit the van at Mohanpur upazila in Rajshahi district on Monday morning. The deceased were identified as Mustafizur Rahman Uzzal, an English teacher at Nakheel Ideal High School, and van driver Mobarak Hossain. Read more: 2 killed in Ctg road accidents The accident occurred around 8:30am at Keshorhaat area of the upazila when the Rajshahi-bound bus coming from Naogaon hit the van, leaving the duo critically injured, said Selim Badsha, officer-in-charge (OC) of Mohanpur Police Station. Locals rushed them to Rajshahi Medical College Hospital where teacher Uzzal succumbed to his injuries around 1pm. Later, the van driver died around 2:30pm while undergoing treatment at the hospital, added the OC. Police seized the bus, said the OC, adding that legal action will be taken in this regard.

A woman was killed and five others injured in a head-on collision between a bus and a battery-run autovan at Ambati area of Patnitala Upazila on Friday night. The deceased was identified as Shanjida Khatun, 26, wife of Rasel Hossain, a resident of Paharkata village of Patnitala Upazila. According to locals, a battery-run auto-van head-on collided with a Nazipur-bound bus at Ambati area of Nazipur-Dhamoirhat road, leaving six people injured. Later, locals took the injured to Patnitala Upazila Health Complex where a duty doctor declared Shanjida died. Palash Chandra Dev, Officer-in-Charge of Patnitala Police Station said that, being informed, a law enforcer’s team was sent to spot. The bus had been seized but the driver and helper managed to flee away.  

Three people were killed in a collision between a pickup van and a truck on Natore-Bogura Highway at Jolarbata in Singra upazila on Monday morning. The deceased were identified as Rahim Ali, 35, and Bidyut Ali, 32, both were residents of Punduri village of Kalam union and Kachuke, 50, a resident of Najarpur village of the same union. ANM Masud, officer-in-charge of Jhalmalia Highway Police Station, said that a truck hit a pickup van carrying saw mill workers at around 9:30 am, leaving van driver Rahim Ali dead on the spot and 4 others critically injured. On information, the fire fighters went to the spot and rescued the injured people and took them to a local hospital from where workers Bidyut Ali and Kachuke were rushed to Rajshahi Medical College Hospital in critical condition. They both died while undergoing treatment at the medical college hospital in the afternoon, the OC added.

Airplane passenger Sonu Jaiswal’s 90-second smartphone video began with the aircraft approaching the runway by flying over buildings and green fields over Pokhara, a Nepalese city in the foothills of the Himalayas. Everything looked normal as Jaiswal’s livestream on Facebook shifted from the picturesque views seen from the plane’s window to fellow passengers who were laughing. Finally, Jaiswal, wearing a yellow sweater, turned the camera to himself and smiled. Then it happened. The plane suddenly appeared to veer toward its left as Jaiswal’s smartphone briefly captured the cries of passengers. Within seconds the footage turned shaky and recorded the screeching sound of an engine. Toward the end of the video, huge flames and smoke took over the frame. The Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu that plummeted into a gorge Sunday, killing all 72 on board, was co-piloted by Anju Khatiwada, who had pursued years of pilot training in the United States after her husband died in a 2006 plane crash while flying for the same airline. Her colleagues described her as a skilled pilot who was very motivated. Read moreNepal begins national mourning after 68 killed in deadly plane crash The deaths of Khatiwada, 44, and Jaiswal, 25, are part of a deadly pattern in Nepal, a country that has seen a series of air crashes over the years, in part due to difficult terrain, bad weather and aging fleets. On Tuesday, authorities began returning some identified bodies to family members and said they were sending the ATR 72-500 aircraft’s data recorder to France for analysis to determine what caused the crash. In India's Ghazipur city, nearly 430 kilometers (270 miles) south of the crash site in Nepal, Jaiswal's family was distraught and still waiting to identify his body. His father, Rajendra Prasad Jaiswal, had boarded a car to Kathmandu on Monday evening and was expected to reach Nepal's capital late Tuesday. “It's a tough wait,” said Jaiswal's brother, Deepak Jaiswal. The news of Jaiswal’s plane crashing in Pokhara reached his home barely minutes after the accident as news channels began broadcasting images of the aircraft's mangled wreckage, still burning and billowing thick gray smoke, Deepak said. Read more: Families mourn Nepal plane victims, data box sent to France Still, the family was not willing to trust the news, holding out hope for his survival. By Sunday evening, however, it had become clear. Deepak, who confirmed the authenticity of Jaiswal's livestream to The Associated Press, was among the first in his family to watch the video that had since gone viral on the internet. “We couldn't believe the news until we saw the video," he said. "It was painful.” Jaiswal, a father of three children, worked at a local liquor store in Alawalpur Afga village in Uttar Pradesh state’s Ghazipur district. Deepak said his brother had gone to Kathmandu to visit Pashupatinath temple — a Hindu shrine dedicated to the god Shiva — and pray for a son, before setting off to Pokhara for sightseeing along with three other friends. “He was not just my brother," Deepak said. “I have lost a friend in him.” The tragedy was felt deeply in Nepal, where 53 passengers were locals. Hundreds of relatives and friends of the victims consoled each other Tuesday at a hospital. Families of some victims whose bodies have been identified prepared funerals for their loved ones. Co-pilot Khatiwada’s colleagues, however, were still in disbelief. “She was a very good pilot and very experienced,” Yeti Airlines spokesperson Pemba Sherpa said of Khatiwada. Khatiwada began flying for Yeti Airlines in 2010 — four years after her husband, Dipak Pokhrel, died in a crash. He was flying a DHC-6 Twin Otter 300 plane for the same airline when it crashed in Nepal’s Jumla district and burst into flames, killing all nine people on board. Khatiwada later remarried. Sherpa said Khatiwada was a “skilled pilot” with a “friendly nature” and had risen to the rank of captain after flying thousands of hours since joining the airline. “We have lost our best,” Sherpa said.

Two ninth-graders were killed and a youth was seriously injured on Sylhet-Tamabil Highway in Jaintiapur upazila as two motorcycles collided, police said. The students were identified as 15-year-olds Sakran Hasan and Md Shaheen Ahmad. They both were from Gowainghat upazila and students of Amir Miah High School Jaflong. Injured Mamum Ahmed, 20, is from Jaintiapur's Nijpat union. "The accident occurred in the Sreepur Assampara area as Sakran and Shaheen were returning to Jaintiapur and Mamum was going to Jaflong on their motorbikes. Their vehicles collided as one of them tried to overtake a truck," Golam Dastgir Ahmad, officer-in-charge (OC) of Jaintapur Model Police Station, said. "The impact of the crash left all of them critically injured. Locals rushed them to the local hospital. The injured were later referred to Sylhet MAG Osmani Medical College Hospital where Shaheen was declared dead upon arrival, and Sakran died at 7pm. Mamum is still not out of the woods," he added. Read more: Two killed after motorcycles collide in Faridpur  

At least three Afghan crew members were killed Saturday when a U.S.-manufactured Black Hawk helicopter they were flying crashed, the Taliban’s defense ministry said. The statement said that five others were wounded in the accident during a training session overseen by Afghanistan's defense ministry at the capital of Kabul. It is not known how many U.S. choppers remain in the hands of the Taliban government. As the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed in mid-August last year, dozens of Afghan pilots fled to Central Asian countries, including Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Afghan air force pilots played a key role, alongside their U.S. counterparts, in the 20-year war against Taliban insurgents that ended with the departure of foreign troops last year. The airstrikes inflicted heavy casualties among the Taliban and repeatedly drove them from positions they had seized in different parts of the country. Read: UN warns 6 million Afghans at risk of famine as crises grow Last year about 140 Afghan pilots and others were flown out of Tajikistan then to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates and their final destination in the U.S. Separately, three civilians were wounded when a bicycle bomb exploded in Kabul, said Khalid Zadran, spokesman for the the capital's police chief. The attack occurred in the Shai neighborhood and there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast.   Recently, the Islamic State group has claimed similar attacks in the country. IS has waged a bloody campaign of attacks on Taliban targets and minority groups, particularly Shiites whom the extremist IS considers heretics.

Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) Wednesday arrested the operator of the crane that tilted to one side and dropped a concrete girder on a passing car, crushing five of a family to death in Dhaka's Uttara. The elite force also arrested the operator's assistant, a security guard of the contractor firm and six others from Dhaka, Gazipur, Sirajganj, and Bagerhat in a case filed over the accident, ASP Imran Khan of Rab headquarters (media wing) said. Monday, a BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) project girder came crashing down on the car near Uttara's Jasimuddin road when it was being moved onto a trailer, suggesting the use of cranes of insufficient strength in the project. Rubel, 50, Fahima, 40, her sister Jhorna, 28, and Jhorna's two children Jannat, 6, and Jakaria, 2, got crushed inside the mangled car. Fortunately, a newlywed couple – Rubel's son Hridoy, 26, and his wife Ria Moni, 21, – also travelling with them escaped death. It came exactly one month after a worker was killed by a falling crane in the Gazipur part of the BRT project, and last year six workers escaped with injuries after a part of a launching girder collapsed near them, close to Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka. A case was filed at Uttara West Police Station over Monday's accident accusing the crane operator, contractor company China Gezhouba Group Corporation and unnamed people. Also read: 5 hurt after iron rods fall on them from crane in Gulistan

Two men riding a bike were killed after being hit by a truck on Khilgaon flyover in Dhaka early on Friday. The deceased were identified as Bdhan Bishwash, 42, and Entaruzzaman Milon, 43. The accident occurred around 3.30 am when the speeding truck hit the motorcycle from behind, leaving the two dead on spot, said Maruf Hosain Milon, sub-inspector at Khilgaon police station. READ: 2 killed in Faridpur road crash “The truck has been seized but its driver managed to flee. The bodies have been sent for autopsy,” said SI Milon.

Two members of an intelligence agency were killed in a road accident in Rangamati on Monday night. The deceased were Abu Daud, 26, and Isa Ruhullah, 25. The accident occurred in the Public Health area at around 9.30 pm. READ: Two killed in Sylhet road crash According to locals, the duo was on their way to Bhedabhedi on a motorcycle. In the  Public Health area, it was hit by a CNG-run autorickshaw. As they fell off the motorcycle a bus of Paharika Poribahan ran over them leaving them dead on the spot. Officer-in-charge of Rangamati Kotwali Police Kabir Hossain said that he himself was at the spot. The bodies were sent to Rangamati Sadar Hospital. A case in this regard was underway, he said.