'A loud noise, and there was chaos'

As soon as the frightened passengers of Samjhauta Express got down at the Attari railway station""eight hours behind schedule""their first act was to rush to the solitary PCO at the station to tell relatives they were safe.

"There was a sudden ball of fire as soon as the train gathered speed after leaving the station," a woman travelling on the train recalled at the Ambala railway station, where the train was stopped for a thorough check-up.

A resident of Saharanpur, Zubaida, who was going to Karachi, said around midnight, there was a loud noise, followed by shouts of 'fire...fire.'

"First we did not understand what had happened," she said at the Ambala railway station, where the train made a special halt for a check-up.

Zubaida, who was travelling in the three-tier sleeper compartment adjacent to the one which caught fire said, "We saw bogies behind ours on fire. Passengers started running for safety. There was chaos."

"I fell down as passengers rushed to other bogies. I hurt my leg," Zubaida, who is continuing her journey, said.

Another passenger Aziz Ahmed, a resident of Delhi who was going to Rawalpindi, hurt his hand in the commotion. "I was travelling in the general compartment when the blast occurred, between 11.45 pm and midnight," he said. Seeing fire from the two coaches, passengers pulled the chain. He said two of them jumped from the running train.