NEW DELHI, Shawwal 20, 1437, July 25, 2016, SPA -- A train rammed into a van ferrying 20 children to school at a railway crossing in northern India on Monday, killing eight of the students and injuring several more, a police officer said. As many as 40 percent of India's train accidents happen at railway crossings in the sprawling South Asian nation each year, railway officials have said. In Monday's incident, the van driver appeared not to have heard a gateman's warning about the approaching train because he was wearing earphones at the time, police officer Arvind Bhushan Pandey said. "Though the gateman tried to alert the van driver about the train, the driver couldn't hear his warnings because he had an earphone on," Pandey, the district police superintendent, told Reuters by telephone. The driver and six children were also injured in the collision at the railway crossing in Aurai, 275 kms (170 miles) from Lucknow, the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh. All the injured are being treated at a nearby hospital, Pandey added. --SPA 15:37 LOCAL TIME 12:37 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/w