20 dead in Italy head-on train crash
This handout picture released by the Italian firefighters Vigili del Fuoco press office on July 12, shows two smashed carriages thrown across the tracks in the incident, which happened on a single track
stretch of line between Ruvo and Corato, in the southern Italian region of Puglia. The chief of the firefighting service in Bari said 20 people had been killed and dozens injured. (AFP) At least 20 people were killed Tuesday in a head-on collision between two passenger trains in the southern Italian region of Puglia, in one of the country’s worst rail accidents in recent years.
Emergency services raced to extract people from the wreckage of smashed carriages thrown across a single track into olive groves near the town of Andria, in what one witness described as an “apocalyptic scene”.
Coffins were taken to the site near the city of Bari to carry away the first of the dead as 200 rescue workers sifted through the wreckage in temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit)
“I saw dead people, others who were begging for help, people crying. The worst scene of my life,” one policeman told journalists.
Vito Montanaro, director general of the Bari heath authority, said 20 people had died and 35 were injured, 18 of them critically.
“It was an enormous accident, a very violent crash,” said Transport Minister Graziano Delrio, who arrived on at the scene along with two ministry inspectors to aid the investigation.
The collision happened on a bend in the track in open countryside and flung the front carriages of both trains into olive groves bordering the line, slinging bits of metal from the wreckage.
“It’s an apocalyptic scene, it was hard not to vomit on first sight,” said local journalist Lucia Olivieri who works for Andria Live.it, adding that rescue workers feared people may still be trapped.
Riccardo Zingaro, head of traffic police in Andria, said the yellow and blue carriages of the commuter trains were “utterly crumpled”.
Local hospitals issued a request on social networks for blood donors to come forward to help the injured. (AFP)