At least 119 people are dead and more than 150 injured after 14 carriages of a passenger train rolled off the track in northern India.

Police spokesman Daljeet Chaudhary said volunteers and railway police pulled bodies from the mangled coaches and were working to rescue passengers who were trapped in other cars.

An injured passenger from the deadly train wreck. Most passengers were sleeping when the train derailed in the early hours of the morning. Photo: AFP/Getty

“Still many more passengers are trapped,” Anil Saxena, a senior railway official in New Delhi said.

Suresh Prabhu, India’s Railways Minister, said the government would immediately investigate the causes of the derailment and promised accountability with the “strictest possible action.”

India’s creaking railway system is the world’s fourth largest, ferrying more than 20 million people each day, but it has a poor safety record, with thousands of people dying in accidents every year.

The nation suffers frequent train derailments, sometimes with tragic consequences, including another train accident in Uttar Pradesh in March last year that killed 39 people and injured 150.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi took to Twitter to express his condolences.

“Anguished beyond words on the loss of lives due to the derailing of the Patna-Indore express. My thoughts are with the bereaved families,” Modi said.

The derailment occurred around 3am on Sunday near Purwa, a village near the industrial city of Kanpur, when the 14 coaches jumped the track.

At least 119 are dead and 150 injured after the crash. photo: Prabhat Kumar Verma/Getty

Coaches crumpled as they crashed into others, trapping hundreds of people inside.

Medical teams were providing first aid near the site while the more seriously injured have been moved to hospitals in Kanpur, Chaudhary said.

The toll was likely to go up as two air-conditioned coaches were severely damaged and people were still trapped inside, said Rajesh Modak of the Railway Protection Force.

Kanpur is a major railway junction and hundreds of trains pass through it every day.

Several trains using the line have been diverted to other routes.

-with AAP