A high-speed train collided with construction machinery on the tracks on Tuesday and derailed near The Hague, in the western Netherlands, causing at least one death and 30 injuries, emergency services announced.
Text: RFI / AFP
The double-decker train was running between Leiden and The Hague and collided with a crane located on the tracks near the town of Voorschoten at around 03:30 in the morning (01:30 GMT).
A freight train also partially collided with construction machinery, rail operators said.
After the impact, the train derailed and two passenger carriages overturned, one into an adjacent field and the other onto a slope of the track, AFP journalists found. One of the wagons caught fire after the accident, local media reported.
“First we heard an explosion and then another much more intense one,” Chris van Engelenburg, a 36-year-old neighbor, told AFP. “Then we heard people screaming,” he added.
The train was carrying about fifty people, according to the Dutch authorities.
The Dutch rail services usually carry out maintenance works on intercity lines at night.
“One person died and at least 30 others were injured. Eleven people were received in neighboring houses, while the seriously injured were transferred to the hospital, “the emergency services indicated.
“The electric locomotive of the freight train was badly damaged but the driver” was examined by a doctor and “is fine,” said the operator, DB Cargo.
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“Terrible” the accident in the Netherlands
It is a “terrible train accident,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte declared on Twitter, confirming that “unfortunately, one person died and many were injured.”
“My thoughts are with the family and with all the victims,” Rutte added.
The president of the Dutch railway company ProRail, John Voppen, referred to a “black day for the Dutch railways”.
Service on this busy line, which connects Amsterdam with Brussels and Paris, has been suspended and will not resume until at least the afternoon, railway authorities said.
Emergency services rushed to the scene, including a helicopter, to transport the most seriously injured to hospital. Some injured were treated in neighboring houses, according to local media.
«The damage is enormous, I have never seen anything like it. But fortunately this does not happen often in the Netherlands,” ProRail spokesman Jeroen Wienen told AFP, noting that “several investigations” had been opened.
“Many are now in fear and uncertainty,” commented the King of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, and Queen Máxima.
“We heard a very loud noise and suddenly the lights went out,” an unidentified witness told local television Omroep West.
“We couldn’t get off the train initially because there was no electricity,” the man said, looking shocked. “We were finally able to after what seemed like hours,” he added.
The worst rail accident in the Netherlands occurred in a 1962 collision between two passenger trains at Harmelen, near the central city of Utrecht, which killed 93 people and injured 52 others.
In 2016, one person died and six were injured when a train collided with a hydraulic crane in the center of the country. In addition, another collision near Amsterdam in 2012 left one dead and 117 injured.
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