PHILADELPHIA -- An Amtrak train bound for New York with 238 passengers and five crew aboard crashed in Philadelphia Tuesday night, killing at least five people, officials said.

Dozens of bloodied passengers clawed and crawled their way out of the wreckage, many escaping through emergency windows and exits. Multiple cars tipped over, leaving a jagged trail of destruction as the train headed toward New Jersey.

PLUS: A chaotic scene in a densely populated neighborhood.

Another 53 people were taken to hospitals, six with critical injuries, officials said.

The National Transportation Safety Board was already gathering information, reports said.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter addressed reporters a little before midnight and said he had been on the crash site. He called the scene "an absolute disastrous mess."

"We do not know what happened here," Nutter added. "We do not know why this happened. There is no information about that. We're not going to speculate about that."

Nutter also said early Wednesday the precise extent of the tragedy was not immediately known.

"I cannot say that everyone is accounted for at this time. They are matching up manifest information...That is a time-sensitive and tedious process that we have to go through and I'm not in a position to make that kind of declaration at the moment," he said, adding that he had been in contact with the mayors of New York City and Washington, D.C., where many of the commuters are believed to live.

"It sounds horrible. The human tragedy, the devastation, I can't image," said Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf.

Amtrak almost immediately suspended all service between New York and Philadelphia. Nutter said "there's no circumstance under which there would be any service through Philadelphia on this Amtrak line for the rest of this week."

"I've never seen anything so devastating," said Jesse Wilson, Philadelphia's deputy fire commissioner. "You could see (that the train cars) completely, completely derailed from the tracks. They were destroyed completely."

The eastbound train, No. 188, runs regularly between Union Station in Washington, D.C., and New York's Penn Station. It departed Washington a little after 7 p.m. and was scheduled to stop in Trenton, MetroPark in Iselin and Newark Penn Station after leaving Philadelphia.

The Associated Press reported that "the front of the train was going into a turn when it shook." The train left the tracks in the Port Richmond area of Northeast Philadelphia around 9:30 p.m., passengers said.

RELATED: Chaos plays out in real time on social media

CNN reported that the Quiet Car and the Business Class car - both at the front of the train - took the "brunt" of the crash. Overhead footage on the network showed rescuers scanning the area, their flashlights searching for people. Roads leading to the area eventually were blocked.

Rescuers placed ladders alongside overturned train cars in an effort to reach victims, according to reports from the wreckage. CBS Philly reported as many as "eight to nine cars" had derailed.

An Associated Press employee, Paul Cheung, was on the train and said he was fortunate to be at the back of the train and the front of it "looks pretty bad."

Another passenger aboard, Patrick Murphy, has been tweeting photos from the train showing a firefighter assisting passengers.

Murphy, a former member of Congress, also said he was unhurt. He told WPVI-Ch. 6 his train "completely tipped over" and passengers escaped from emergency windows. He estimated that the train was probably going about 50 miles-per-hour.

Combing the scene "were paramedics and Amtrak people," said Lewis Spurell, who lives nearby along Cheltenham and Torresdale avenues and headed to the scene via bicycle.

Neither Spurell nor other nearby residents said they rode the rail line, but some said you can frequently hear trains as they pass through the neighborhood that is mostly row homes.

One resident said on a normal evening, you can walk under an overpass Train 188 took just before the accident. On Tuesday, police and emergency management crews blocked every route toward the scene while residents congregated outside their homes.

Port Richmond is a blue collar neighborhood along the Delaware River, a short distance northeast of Philadelphia's center city. SEPTA's Market-Frankford elevated subway runs nearby.

The injured were taken to at least three area hospitals and hundreds of police and fire officials responded to scene.

NTSB is currently gathering information about tonight's Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia. — NTSB (@NTSB) May 13, 2015

Aerial pictures show terrible Amtrak crash site in Philly pic.twitter.com/Eu9CW01niC — Jon Passantino (@passantino) May 13, 2015

Staff writers Ashley Peskoe, Greg Adomaitis and Noah Cohen contributed to this report.