Sixth victim found in French train crash

Oct 13, 2006, 15:08 GMT

Zoufftgen, France - Rescue workers found another body in the wreck of a passenger train that collided head on with a freight train on Wednesday, bringing the death toll in the accident to six, police sources said early Friday.

The sixth victim, a male, was 'wedged deep in the wreck of the train,' making recovery difficult, said Julien Charles, director of the office of the chief of police of the department of Moselle.

The accident, which occurred a few hundred metres from the Franco-Luxembourg border, involved a passenger train travelling from Luxembourg to the French city of Nancy and a freight train travelling to Luxembourg.

The crash also injured 16 people, two of them seriously.

Investigators now believe that human error may have caused the collision, which took place on a stretch of railway line under repair. Only one track was operating, and two-way traffic was being routed over the line alternately.

'It was not a signalling error,' the head of the Luxembourg Railways (CFL), Alex Kremer, said, and suggested the accident may have been due to a 'problem of coordination' between French and Luxembourger railway agents.

The trains were each believed to have been travelling at 100 kilometres per hour when they collided head-on, sending several of the freight cars crashing into the passenger train, which was carrying about 20 commuters.