Three people were hurt when a high-speed Intercity Express (ICE) train derailed in southern Germany yesterday after hitting a tractor that had fallen onto the track, German police said.

A police spokesman said the tractor driver was seriously hurt while the train driver and one passenger suffered less serious injuries when the engine and first carriage derailed at relatively low speed near Istein in Baden-Wuerttemberg state.

The ICE train from Basel to Dortmund was travelling at about 80 kph in a wine-growing area near the Rhine River just north of the Swiss border when it struck the tractor.

"A wine-grower on a tractor slid off a slope onto the track and an ICE train travelling at a reduced speed crashed into the tractor," a police spokesman said. "It's a region filled with curves and the train was going no faster than 80 kph."

A spokesman for the Baden-Wuerttemberg interior ministry in Stuttgart said the accident, at 9:35 a.m. (0735 GMT), was most likely caused when the tractor's brakes failed.

Both northbound and southbound rail lines were closed and passengers from the crashed train and others that had been disrupted were being transferred by bus.

A total of 101 people were killed and 105 injured in 1998 in Germany's worst train crash, when a similar ICE train jumped the rails at 200 kph, sending carriages ploughing into a road bridge which collapsed and crushed several coaches.