NEW DELHI: India’s new railways minister promised to improve safety on the ramshackle network Tuesday as the death toll from a train crash in the north rose to 26 after more bodies were pulled from carriages.

A passenger express traveling in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) ploughed into a stationary freight train at a station on Monday morning, killing 26 and injuring 44, Indian Railways spokesman Alok Singh told AFP.

Emergency and medical teams worked into the night Monday to prise open the carriages to reach the dead and injured, but were hampered by a lack of specialist cutting equipment.

“Safety is one of the important factors that need to be taken care of by the Railways Ministry,” new Railways Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda told reporters in New Delhi as he took office, according to the PTI news agency.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised a sum of 200,000 rupees ($3,400) per family to relatives of the dead and a further 50,000 rupees each to the wounded, an official statement from his office said.

Deadly accidents are frequent on the poorly-funded Indian railways, which are still the main form of long-distance travel in the vast country.

In 2012 a government report said almost 15,000 people were killed every year on the network, describing the deaths as an annual “massacre” due mainly to poor safety standards.