A horrific rail crash in India which killed more than 300 people was caused by a signalling error, the country’s railways minister has said.

The error in the electronic signalling system led to a train wrongly changing tracks, leading to two trains derailing on Friday evening.

Hundreds of people were trapped inside more than a dozen damaged rail cards – and as the rescue effort comes to an end on Sunday, the death toll has now passed 300 people.

The crash happened in the Balasore district of Odisha, and preliminary investigations revealed a signal was given to the Coromandel Express to enter the main track line, but the signal was later taken off.

The train entered another line, known as the loop line, and crashed into a goods train parked there.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s railways minister, said: ‘Who has done it and what is the reason will come out of an investigation.’

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is currently focusing on modernising the British colonial-era rail network, as the country sees several hundred accidents every year.

India’s train network is the largest under one management in the world – more than 12 million people take 14,000 trains across the country every day, travelling on 40,000 miles of track.

Rescue and recovery efforts continued overnight (Picture: AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

The death toll has risen to 300 (Picture: AP Photo/Arabinda Mahapatra)

Photographs of people killed in the crash have been laid out to be identified (Picture: AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

Efforts to clear the mangled wreckage from the tracks concluded this morning, with 15 more bodies recovered on Saturday.

Heavy cranes were used to move an engine which had settled on top of a rail car.

Sudhanshu Sarangi, director-general of fire and emergency services in Odisha, confirmed no bodies were found in the engine.

Mr Modi went to the crash site on Saturday to see the relief effort and talk to rescue officials in the aftermath of one of the country’s deadliest rail accidents in decades.

In 1995, two trains collided near New Delhi, killing 358 people in one of the worst rail accidents in India.

In 2016, a passenger train slid off the tracks between the cities of Indore and Patna, killing 146 people.

Most rail accidents in India are blamed on human error or outdated signalling equipment.

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‘Who has done it and what is the reason will come out of an investigation.’