Fire swept through a train in Pakistan early Thursday, killing more than 65 people after a natural gas cylinder being used by a passenger to cook breakfast suddenly exploded, said officials.
Some of the deaths were caused as passengers leaped from the moving railway cars to escape the spreading flames, according to multiple railway officials.
The train departed from Karachi and was heading into northern Pakistan on a journey that would have taken more than a day. The cylinder explosion occurred near the city of Liaquatpur, about 350 miles southwest of the capital, Islamabad. The fire quickly spread to three cars, said Ali Nawaz, a spokesman for Pakistan’s railways.
Pakistani television showed images of fire licking out of the train windows and plumes of black smoke, as firefighters tried to douse the carriages.
“People were jumping off, some of them were on fire,” a witness told local Pakistani media group Geo.
Many of the passengers belonged to a conservative Muslim evangelical group, known as Tableeghi Jammat, who were on their way to a religious conference.
