After visiting the crash site, Punjab's Chief Minister Amarinder Singh told reporters that the number of dead was 34.

Speaking at the hospital in Mukheriyan, the nearest large town to the scene of the accident, Singh said figures of 50 dead and 150 injured that he had announced to the state assembly were "unconfirmed."

Later, hospital officials in Mukheriyan said another four people had died and 17 people were in serious condition.

At least four carriages were badly damaged in the collision of the two passenger trains near the village of Mansar 150km east of Amritsar in the northern state of Punjab.

Housewife Kamla Rani had been doing her chores deep in the Indian countryside when she heard a terrifying bang and raced outside.

Just a short distance away two passenger trains had collided head-on, killing and injuring many people.

"I heard a loud crash, almost a big blast. I ran out of my house to see smoke all around. Men and women from our village rushed to the accident site with ladders to try and get out as many people as possible," said Rani.

She quickly arrived at a horrific scene of twisted metal near this village in the northern state of Punjab.

Blue and cream wagons reared into the air at crazy angles. Inside, passengers screamed for help.

"People were shrieking as they were trapped inside coaches," said Jodha Mal, 40, owner of a nearby shop. He said he heard a huge screeching as the drivers tried desperately to halt the trains before the collision 150 kilometers (90 miles) east of the Sikh holy city of Amritsar.

Rescuers used gas cutters to free passengers screaming for help. Some villagers helped them while thousands more looked on from both sides of the tracks amid a cacophony of curious chatter.

At least four carriages were smashed in the collision between an express train travelling from Jammu in Kashmir to Ahmedabad in western Gujarat state, and a local train heading from Jalandhar to Pathankot.

A long line of bodies covered with white sheets stretched across the ground as workers loaded them into vans to send to hospital morgues.

Soldiers pulled an elderly man from the wreckage, his leg bloodied. Others prodded with long metal rods deep inside the wagons searching for victims.

Many of the dead were badly mutilated, police said.

Railway officials said there appeared to have been a mixup that allowed the local train onto the single-track main line at the wrong time. But Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav said the cause still had to be determined.

The grisly scenes that played across Indian television screens were all too familiar.

There are around 300 accidents a year, small and big, involving the railway system, which sprawls 108,700 kilometers (66,800 miles) across the nation of a billion-plus people and carries around 13 million people each day.

Critics say its accident rate is partly due to its antiquated infrastructure. Industry analysts criticise the government for introducing new trains every year without investing in the system's upkeep. Raising railway fares is a major political liability in India.

In September 2002 130 people died when the luxury Rajdhani Express plunged off a bridge and tumbled into a river in eastern India. In 1998, a collision between two trains claimed at least 200 lives in Punjab.

Officials say many accidents could be avoided by reducing human involvement, especially in switching of tracks and signalling.

The accident came just five months after Yadav absolved himself of any responsibility for the railways, saying the fate of passengers rested with the Hindu god of machines, Vishwakarma.

"Indian Railways is the responsibility of Lord Vishwakarma," he said.