Italy train collision kills 20, injures dozens

An aerial image showed train carriages smashed and crumpled by the force of the impact, with debris spread out amongst olive trees which flanked both sides of the rail line.

Rescue workers feared people may still be trapped. Handout from Italian fire brigade/EPA

ROME // At least 20 people were killed on Tuesday in a head-on collision between two trains in the southern Italian region of Puglia, the local health authority said, raising an earlier death toll and warning that 18 others were in a critical condition.

Vito Montanaro, director general of the Bari heath authority, said 20 people had died and 35 were injured – 18 of whom were in a critical condition – in the crash on a single track near the town of Andria. Authorities had earlier put the death toll at 12.

Aerial footage showed emergency services racing to extract people from the wreckage of smashed carriages.

Funeral wagons bearing coffins arrived at the scene to carry away the first of the dead.

The collision occurred on a bend in the track in open countryside and flung the front carriages of both trains into ­olive groves bordering the line, slinging bits of metal from the wreckage.

“It’s an apocalyptic scene, it was hard not to vomit on first sight,” said journalist Lucia Olivieri. She said rescue workers feared people may still be trapped and that hospitals had issued a request on social networks for blood donors to come forward to help the injured.

Paramedics set up an impromptu medical centre among the olive trees, with three helicopters ferrying out the most seriously hurt victims, including one young boy.

Many of the passengers on one of the trains were students heading to lessons at the University of Bari.

Riccardo Zingaro, head of traffic police in Andria, said the yellow and blue carriages were “utterly crumpled” by the impact.

Investigators said at least one of the trains had been travelling very fast, and it was possible the collision was caused by human error. One of the four-carriage trains was supposed to have waited at a station for a green light before heading down the single track between the towns of Corato and Andria.

Prime minister Matteo Renzi interrupted a speech in Milan to say the country would “not stop until we know what happened”.

“This is a moment for tears in which we need to work to recover the victims and wounded,” he said.

Mr Renzi said he was returning immediately to Rome following the collision.

Italy’s transport minister Graziano Delrio was on his way to the scene along with two ministry inspectors to aid the investigation.

A previous big train crash in Italy left 38 people dead near Naples in 2013.

* Agence France-Presse