Sixteen people were killed and scores were in hospital yesterday after two trains crashed head-on in southern Poland in the country’s worst accident in more than two decades.
A southbound train from Warsaw slammed into another train travelling north on the same track at Szczekociny, some 200 kilometres from the capital, in the accident late on Saturday, crumpling their locomotives and hurling passengers from their seats.
Poland’s PAP news agency said an American woman was among the dead. Fifty-seven people were in hospital yesterday, including one who was in a serious condition, emergency officials said.
President Bronislaw Komo-rowski visited the scene, saying: “People from across Poland and citizens from other countries suffered in the catastrophe,” adding that he would call a period of national mourning.
Ukrainian nationals were reported to be among the injured, while French and Spanish citizens were also among the some 350 passengers on the trains but apparently escaped unscathed.
Poland’s neighbours Germany, Ukraine and Slovakia were among the first to send condolences to Warsaw in the wake of the crash.
The two trains collided at around 9 p.m. (2000 GMT) Saturday as they were travelling on the same track, according to Poland’s PKP railways.
One was heading to southern Krakow from Warsaw, while the other was bound for the capital from southeastern Przemysl.Investigators gave no early indication as to what caused the crash, which happened on a stretch of the line that had recently been modernised, according to Transport Minister Slawomir Nowak.
The crash comes as Poland is hurriedly revamping its communist-era rail and road infrastructures ahead of the Euro 2012 European football championships, which it is co-hosting with Ukraine and which kick off on June 8.
It threw three carriages and both of the trains’ locomotives off the tracks, leaving them piled high on top of each other in a mass of tangled steel.
“We heard a deafening noise and we were hurled out of our seats,” an unnamed survivor told Polish media after escaping from the wreckage. “It was terrifying. The scale of destruction is huge,” one of the first firemen on the scene told PAP.