NEW DELHI

Indian authorities on Tuesday asked the citizens to help identify more than 100 dead bodies which have not been claimed so far after a deadly rail accident last week, according to a senior official.

The crash on Friday evening in the Balasore district of the eastern Odisha state, involving two passenger trains and a freight train, killed at least 278 people and injured over 1,000 others in what is considered the country's worst rail disaster in recent history.

Odisha Chief Secretary Pradeep Kumar Jena has requested everyone to help identify the bodies kept in mortuaries in Bhubaneshwar, the capital of Odisha.

“Out of the 275 dead bodies, 170 have been identified,” Jena told reporters.

“The government has made arrangements for free transportation of the bodies”, he added.

According to the Indian railways, one of the trains – the high-speed Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express – met with the accident and the other passenger train and freight train came under its impact.

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is investigating the accident.