Three people were killed and three others injured as a train rammed into a pickup van near Amirganj level crossing on the Dhaka-Chattogram rail track under Raipur upazila in Narsingdi on Saturday morning.

The dead are Sujat Mia, 23, Anis, 23, and Shaheen Mia, 22. All were technical department staff of a mobile phone company.

The injured were admitted to the Narsingdi Sadar Hospital.

Narsingdi railway police outpost in-charge sub-inspector Emaduel Zahedi Hasan said that around 1:00pm a Dhaka-bound pickup van from Radhagonj bazar under Raipura reached Amirganj level-crossing area.

When the van was trying to cross the rail track, the Chattogram-bound Joynatika Express train hit the van which was mangled.

Two people in the pickup van died on the spot and four others were injured.

Locals rushed the injured to the Narsingdi Sadar Hospital where another succumbed to his injuries.

Police recovered bodies and sent them to the hospital morgue.

Railway police sources said that after checking with  the mobile company tower, the company staff members were returning to Dhaka.

Earlier on May 21, three people were killed as a train rammed into a pick-up van at an unauthorised level crossing at Nolchhata in Kaliganj upazila under Gazipur.    

Fatal accidents at level crossings are common in Bangladesh due to a huge number of illegal and unmanned level crossings.

Till Saturday, at least 20 people were killed in collisions with trains at level crossings this year.

Currently, around 47 per cent level crossings in the country are unauthorised and around 80 per cent unmanned, according to the Bangladesh Railway data.

Among the unauthorised level crossings, 950 or around 72 per cent have been constructed by the Local Government Engineering Department, 116 by municipalities, 54 by the city corporations, 12 by the Roads and Highways Department, nine by upazila parishads and 170 by other entities.