At least one person died and 30 were injured, many seriously, when a passenger train carrying some 60 people derailed in the Netherlands early Tuesday morning after colliding with construction machinery on the track, emergency services reported. Dutch.
In the pre-dawn darkness, rescue teams brought the injured to the crash site in Voorschoten, a town near The Hague in the south of the country. A spokesman for the fire department told Dutch radio that 19 people had been taken to hospital with serious injuries, while the other injured were being treated at the scene.
The accident occurred at 03:35 in the morning and the front part of the double-decker train ended up in a meadow, while the central sector of the convoy was next to the track. A fire broke out in the wagons at the rear and has already been extinguished, according to witnesses.
The train collided with a crane that was stopped on the rails, although the first reports spoke of the collision of two trains.
“We heard a big bang and all of a sudden the lights went out,” an unidentified witness told local television Omroep West. “We couldn’t get off the train right away because there was no power,” the man added, visibly in shock. “Finally, we got out after what seemed like hours.”
Nederlandse Spoorwegen reported in a tweet that trains between Leiden and parts of The Hague were canceled due to the accident.
