BBC Online :
Six people have been killed and 16 injured in a train accident on the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark.
Rail network officials said debris from a freight train – possibly a tarpaulin – hit a commuter train during a heavy storm, forcing it to brake suddenly. There were 131 passengers and three crew on board.
The debris struck the commuter train – running from Odense to the capital Copenhagen – at about 07:35 local time (06:35 GMT). Images from the scene show containers on the freight train with their sides torn off.
Emergency services reportedly struggled in the bad weather to reach the passenger train, which came to a stop on the bridge.
“There was a loud crash and the windows started smashing onto our heads,” passenger Heidi Langberg Zumbusch told Danish broadcaster DR. “We flew down onto the floor, and then the train stopped.”
Ms Zumbusch said fellow passengers told her the side of the carriage in front of theirs had been ripped off.
“We were lucky. The people in the carriage in front of us were not so lucky,” she said.
An emergency centre has been set up at the western end of the bridge in the town of Nyborg.
The bridge is closed to both cars and trains towards the island of Funen, but car traffic toward Zealand has now reopened. Tens of thousands of vehicles cross the bridge every day, and the storm had already caused several accidents on the road section earlier on Tuesday.
Six people have been killed and 16 injured in a train accident on the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark.
Rail network officials said debris from a freight train – possibly a tarpaulin – hit a commuter train during a heavy storm, forcing it to brake suddenly. There were 131 passengers and three crew on board.
The debris struck the commuter train – running from Odense to the capital Copenhagen – at about 07:35 local time (06:35 GMT). Images from the scene show containers on the freight train with their sides torn off.
Emergency services reportedly struggled in the bad weather to reach the passenger train, which came to a stop on the bridge.
“There was a loud crash and the windows started smashing onto our heads,” passenger Heidi Langberg Zumbusch told Danish broadcaster DR. “We flew down onto the floor, and then the train stopped.”
Ms Zumbusch said fellow passengers told her the side of the carriage in front of theirs had been ripped off.
“We were lucky. The people in the carriage in front of us were not so lucky,” she said.
An emergency centre has been set up at the western end of the bridge in the town of Nyborg.
The bridge is closed to both cars and trains towards the island of Funen, but car traffic toward Zealand has now reopened. Tens of thousands of vehicles cross the bridge every day, and the storm had already caused several accidents on the road section earlier on Tuesday.
