The death toll from the collision of two Indian passenger trains in Odisha state has surged to 288 and more than 850 are injured, a state government official told AFP on Saturday, making the rail accident the country’s deadliest in more than two decades.

According to AFP, Sudhanshu Sarangi, director general of Odisha Fire Services, also said that “rescue work is still going on” and there were “a lot of serious injuries”.

Chief Secretary Pradeep Jena said on Twitter that over 200 ambulances had been called to the scene of Friday’s accident in Odisha’s Balasore district and 100 additional doctors, on top of 80 already there, had been mobilized.

Early on Saturday morning, Reuters video footage showed police officials moving bodies covered in white cloths off the railway tracks.

“I was asleep,” an unidentified male survivor told NDTV news. “I was woken up by the noise of the train derailing. Suddenly I saw 10-15 people dead. I managed to come out of the coach, and then I saw a lot of dismembered bodies.”

Video footage from Friday showed rescuers climbing up one of the mangled trains to find survivors, while passengers called for help and sobbed next to the wreckage.

The collision occurred at about 19:00 local time (1330 GMT) on Friday when the Howrah Superfast Express, running from Bangalore to Howrah, West Bengal, collided with the Coromandel Express, which runs from Kolkata to Chennai.

Authorities have provided conflicting accounts on which train derailed first to become entangled with the other. The Ministry of Railways said it has initiated an investigation into the incident.

Although Jena and some media reports have suggested a freight train was also involved in the crash, railway authorities have yet to comment on that possibility.

An extensive search-and-rescue operation has been mounted, involving hundreds of fire department personnel and police officers as well as sniffer dogs. National Disaster Response Force teams were also at the site.

On Friday, hundreds of young people lined up outside a government hospital in Odisha’s Soro to donate blood.

According to Indian Railways, its network facilitates the transportation of over 13 million people every day. But the state-run monopoly has had a patchy safety record because of ageing infrastructure.

The state has declared Saturday a day of state mourning as a mark of respect to the victims.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — who officials said would visit the crash site and hospitals later Saturday — said he was “distressed by the train accident”.

“In this hour of grief, my thoughts are with the bereaved families. May the injured recover soon,” he tweeted.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said he was “deeply saddened by the loss of hundreds of lives” in the incident.

In a tweet, he extended his “heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families who lost their loved ones in this tragedy” and prayed for the injured people’s speedy recovery.

Expressing his grief on the “high death toll”, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari offered his condolences to the victims’ families and wished quick recovery to those injured.

India’s deadliest railway accidents

Here are details of some of the deadliest rail accidents in India in recent decades:

June 1981: At least 800 people were killed when seven rear coaches of an overcrowded passenger train were blown off the track and fell into a river during a cyclone.

July 1988: An express train left the rails and plunged into a monsoon-swollen lake near Quilon in southern India, killing at least 106 people.

August 1995: At least 350 people were killed when two trains collided 200km (125 miles) from Delhi.

August 1999: Two trains collided near Calcutta, leading to the deaths of at least 285 people.

October 2005: Several coaches of a passenger train derailed in southern Andhra Pradesh state, near Velugonda. At least 77 people were killed.

July 2011: Around 70 people were killed and over 300 injured when a mail train derailed in Fatehpur.

November 2016: Some 146 people were killed and more than 200 injured when an express train derailed in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

January 2017: At least 41 people were killed after several passenger train coaches go off the rails in southern Andhra Pradesh state.

October 2018: A commuter train ran through a crowd gathered on the tracks for a festival in northern India’s Amritsar city, killing at least 59 people and injuring 57.