PUKHRAYAN, India — Rescuers worked through the night to pull people out of mangled coaches after an overnight passenger train derailed early Sunday in northern India, killing at least 115 people, police said.

The death toll was expected to rise further because rescue workers had yet to gain access to one of the worst-damaged of the 14 coaches that derailed, said Daljeet Chaudhary, a director general of police. About 150 people were injured, he said.

Rescuers use machinery to remove debris Sunday after 14 coaches of an overnight passenger train derailed near a village in northern India. The cause was not immediately clear. Accidents are relatively common on India's sprawling rail network. Associated Press/Rajesh Kumar Singh

The train derailed at around 3:10 a.m., jolting awake passengers who had settled in for the long trip. Survivors and bodies were retrieved from mangled coaches that had fallen on their side.

Ramchandra Tewari, a passenger who suffered a head injury, said he was asleep when he was suddenly flung to the floor of his coach.

“There was a loud sound like an earthquake. I fell from my berth and a lot of luggage fell over me,” Tewari told reporters from his hospital bed in the city of Kanpur. “I thought I was dead, and then I passed out.”

Another passenger, Satish Kumar, said the train was traveling at normal speed when it stopped suddenly.

“It restarted, and then we heard a crash,” Kumar, whose coach remained standing on the track, said at the derailment site. “When we came out of the train, we saw a few coaches had derailed.”

The cause of the derailment was not immediately clear. Accidents are relatively common on India’s sprawling rail network, which is the world’s third-largest but lacks modern signaling and communication systems. Most accidents are blamed on poor maintenance and human error.

The impact of the derailment was so severe that one of the coaches landed on top of another, crushing the one below, said Brig. Anurag Chibber, who was heading the army’s rescue team. “We fear there could be many more dead in the lower coach,” he said.

Javeed Ahmad, the police chief of Uttar Pradesh state where the derailment took place, said 115 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage.

The derailment occurred near the village of Pukhrayan, outside of Kanpur, an industrial city about 250 miles southeast of New Delhi. The Patna-Indore Express train, linking the central Indian city of Indore to the city of Patna to its northeast, completes its 845-mile journey in 27 hours.

Medical teams provided first aid near the site, while the more seriously injured were moved to hospitals in Kanpur, Chaudhary said. Of the roughly 150 injured, 72 were in serious condition, he said.

Anxious relatives of passengers searched for their family members among the injured and the dead at hospitals in Kanpur.

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