A fire that raced through an Indian train carriage packed with sleeping passengers, killed at least 26 people, and forced terrified passengers to smash windows in a frantic bid to escape.
Some passengers were able to break the toilet windows of the train, but other victims were overcome by the thick, swirling smoke and bodies were found heaped at the windows and doors, reports on Saturday said.
"We were suffocating because we couldn't get the windows open, the windows are really strong," one young man who survived but who lost his cousin to the flames told India's NDTV news.
Rescue officials said many bodies were charred beyond recognition and would have to undergo DNA tests to determine their identity.
"Rescue teams have so far recovered 26 bodies from the three-tier coach of the train while five of the eight injured have been admitted to hospital for emergency treatment," South Western Railway spokesman S. Biswas told AFP.
Forensic teams were on their way to the train site to collect body samples for analysis, The Press Trust of India reported.
Prime Minister Manmohan Sigh expressed "shock and grief at the loss of life in the train accident in Andhra Pradesh" in a statement on his official Twitter account,
The carriage was gutted by the inferno and was a mass of twisted metal and melted plastic seats. Adjacent coaches also bore scorch marks, testifying to the ferocity of the fire.
There were conflicting reports about the number aboard with police saying 65 while national Railways Minister Mallikarjun Kharge said there were 67 people in the carriage, sleeping six to a compartment.
Kharge told AFP the blaze was believed to have been caused by an electricity fault.
India's underfunded, accident-prone rail network, one of the world's largest, is still the main form of long-distance travel in the huge country despite fierce competition from private airlines.
The coach caught fire in the pre-dawn hours as it travelled from the high-tech city of Bangalore to Nanded, 300 kilometres from the Hyderabad city.
Two of those who died were children, railway officials said.
The exit doors of Indian trains are customarily locked at night, reports said, while the carriage windows are covered with bars, making escape all but impossible.
The toilet windows are the only ones that have no bars and the spaces and berths are narrow.
The tragedy comes a little over a year after another train accident in the same state of Andhra Pradesh killed 32 people and shone the spotlight again on the Indian rail network's dismal safety record.
That train was also carrying sleeping passengers and was also attributed to an electrical fault.
It was not immediately known whether more bodies would be found, police said.
