:: Six coaches of a passenger train derailed in northern India on Saturday, killing 23 people and injuring at least 81, officials said.

Two of the coaches telescoped into each other, while four others toppled over after going off the track, said Arvind Kumar, a top official in Uttar Pradesh, the state where the derailment occurred.

Neeraj Sharma, a railway spokesman, said the incident took place near the small town of Khatauli.

The cause of the derailment was not immediately known, Sharma said.

Railway police and local volunteers helped pull passengers out of the upturned coaches of the Kalinga-Utkal Express, which connects the Hindu holy city of Haridwar with the temple town of Puri, in the eastern state of Orissa.

The injured were taken to a hospital, where doctors described their condition as stable.

“Ten people have died and dozens have been injured. Most of the injured have been taken to the hospital,” said P S Mishra, chief medical officer for the area, by phone.

Police said the casualties were being rushed to hospital, but they were unable to give numbers.

“There are certainly casualties but right now the focus is on evacuation,” senior police officer Jitender Kumar told AFP by phone from the accident site.

“We are shifting everyone to the hospital. We are trying to take out those trapped inside the coaches.”

Photographs from the scene in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh showed people climbing onto upended carriages to try to pull passengers out.

The accident is the latest disaster to hit India’s most populous state. It comes just a week after dozens of children died at a hospital that had run out of oxygen there.

India’s railway network is still the main form of long-distance travel in the vast country, but it is poorly funded and deadly accidents often occur.

Less than a year ago 146 people died in a similar disaster in Uttar Pradesh.

A 2012 government report said almost 15,000 people were killed every year on India’s railways and described the loss of life as an annual “massacre.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has pledged to invest $137 billion over five years to modernize the crumbling railways, making them safer, faster and more efficient.