A bomb apparently planted by Maoist rebels derailed an overnight passenger train in India, causing it to crash into an oncoming cargo train and at least sixty five people were killed and 200 injured.

Survivors described a night of screaming and chaos after the blast and said it took rescuers more than three hours to reach the scene.

The blue passenger train and the red cargo train were knotted together in mangled metal along a rural stretch of track near the small town of Sardiha, about 50 kilometers west of Calcutta.

Maoist rebels, known as Naxalites after the village of Naxalbari in West Bengal where the insurgency was hatched in 1967, have been stepping up their attacks recently and have begun targeting civilians as well as police and government paramilitary forces.

They control swathes of central India’s impoverished states.

Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee said a bomb had hit the train, but police said they were also looking at other sabotage methods such as the removal of the tracks’ ‘fish plates’. Banerjee added “From whatever I have been told the apprehension is the Maoists were involved”.

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