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Seven killed, 105 hurt in German train crash

BRUEHL (Germany): At least seven people were killed and 105 injured on Sunday when a train travelling along one of Europe's busiest railway routes derailed and ploughed into a house near Cologne in Germany.

Police said they could not rule out finding further bodies as hundreds of rescue workers sifted in the dark through the wreckage of the train near the small town of Bruehl, south of Cologne.

The accident happened when the train, travelling from Amsterdam to Basle, was diverted from one track to another because of building work on the line.

The crash was the worst in Germany since the Eschede disaster of 1998 which killed 101 in the country's biggest post-war rail tragedy.

Twenty passengers were rushed to hospital with serious injuries. An elderly couple in the house escaped unharmed but were said to be in a state of shock.

Police did not give the nationality of those killed but said the train was carrying some 300 people from across Europe and the United States.

Five carriages and the locomotive left the track just outside Bruehl railway station and two carriages then plummeted down an embankment into the house, landing in its living room and front garden.

"I'm absolutely amazed it is not any worse," said police spokesman Winrich Granitzka. He added that trees to the side of the track had prevented some of the carriages falling down the slope.

Around 300 rescue workers including doctors attended to those injured and sought to establish if any more bodies lay underneath the wreckage.

A police spokesman said he understood that the train involved was not one of German Railways' high-speed Inter-City Express trains like the one involved in the Eschede crash.

The Eschede accident, in which a train with a faulty wheel left the track and hurtled into a bridge, prompted questions about the safety of the German rail network.

There have since been several more minor accidents, including last August when 40 were injured when one underground train crashed into another in Cologne.

The Bruehl accident is the latest in a series of serious rail crashes in Europe in recent months.

Nineteen people were killed in a blazing wreckage after two trains collided head-on in southern Norway last month, while in October two trains collided outside London's Paddington station, killing 31 people.-Reuters