At least 17 workers died this Wednesday and several more were wounded by the collapse of a gantry of a railway bridge under construction in northeast India, police said.
The structure that collapsed was in Sairang, a town on the outskirts of Aizawal, the capital of Mizoram state, police said. The bridge led about two years in construction.
Residents in the vicinity rescued the injured workers and the transferred to a hospitalthe authorities added. Rescuers from the National Disaster Response Force also went to the area to search for possible survivors.
The railway authorities are investigating the cause of the collapse. In the work there was 40 workers at the time of the accident, police added.
For a long time, the transport infrastructure of India registers security issues which, on occasions, have caused major tragedies on highways and bridges.