15 killed in Poland crash
Rescuers search overnight for survivors after two trains collide head-on
Rescue workers toiled overnight to pull survivors from the wreckage of a head-on train crash in southern Poland as the death toll rose to 15, in one of the country’s worst rail disasters.
“We know that 15 people are dead. Unfortunately, we have not yet been able to remove the body of the last victim. We can see it but not get to it,” Pawel Fratczak, a spokesman for the emergency services in Szczekociny, said.
“I can say the stage of the operation to evacuate the injured is now over,” he added.
“We have sent in six sniffer dogs specially trained to locate survivors and bodies. They did not indicate anything. But we will not be 100% sure until we have cleared away the wreckage.”
Emergency services were preparing to remove the mangled engines and carriages from the track.
“This is the worst catastrophe in years,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said when he arrived on the scene on Saturday.
Sixty people were hospitalised with about half reported to be in a serious condition, rescuers said.
Ukrainian nationals were reported to be among the injured, while French and Spanish citizens were also on the trains but apparently not injured in the crash.
A total of 350 passengers were on board the two trains which collided head-on at 9pm on Saturday as they were travelling on the same track, according to Poland’s PKP railways.
One train was en route to the southern city of Krakow from the capital Warsaw, while the other was bound for the capital from the southeastern city of Przemysl.
Investigators gave no early indications as to what caused the crash, which happened on a stretch of the line which had recently been modernised, according to Transport Minister Slawomir Nowak.
Images of the wreckage broadcast by the TVN24 commercial news channel showed tonnes of mangled metal, with reports indicating that three carriages had jumped the tracks along with the locomotives from both trains.
“We heard a deafening noise and we were hurled out of our seats,” an unnamed survivor told the PAP Polish news agency.
“We saw crushed bodies pinned beneath seats and we saw parts of bodies inside and outside the train wagons,” the survivor said.