85 bodies recovered from Indian truck crash

RESCUERS in India today recovered the bodies of 85 people from the mangled wreckage of a truck that plunged into a ravine in one of the country's worst accidents in recent years, police said.

Some 200 pilgrims were crowded on the truck travelling to a religious fair in the desert state of Rajasthan in western India, and apart from the fatalities some 60 people were injured, many of them seriously, police said.

"People have been taken out of the gorge,'' said police superintendent Rupinder Singh in Rajsamand district, where the accident occurred overnight.

"Eighty-five bodies have been recovered.''

Police said they were trying to confirm the whereabouts of some 50 remaining passengers, adding that many of them were believed to have survived.

Anxious villagers thronged hospitals where the injured had been taken.

About 10 cranes were brought to the accident site overnight as rescuers using searchlights scrambled to find survivors and recover bodies.

After dawn today, the operation had been scaled back to recover the badly damaged truck, an AFP correspondent said, as survivors searched for their scattered belongings.

The truck driver lost control on a sharp bend in a mountainous region and smashed through a protective roadside wall, plunging into the 25m-deep gorge, said Singh.