At least 10 people were killed in eastern France on Saturday
after a high-speed train came off the tracks and plunged into a canal during a
test run, authorities said.
Around 50 people
-- mostly engineers and other railway staff -- were aboard the TGV when it
derailed outside the city of Strasbourg, according to the French railway
operator SNCF.
Images from the
scene showed sections of the train partially submerged in the canal, near a
bridge.
Besides those
killed, five other people remain unaccounted for, 12 were seriously injured and
22 were slightly injured, the French Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable
Development and Energy said in a statement.
The news agency
Agence France-Presse reported that it was the country's first fatal TGV
accident in three decades.
'Dramatic accident' under investigation
The ecology ministry, which is
responsible for the transportation sector, said the cause of the "dramatic
accident" wasn't yet known. Technical experts have been called in to
investigate.
The SNCF said
there was nothing at this stage to link the disaster to the deadly terrorist
attacks in Paris on Friday.
AFP cited a
senior local official, Dominique-Nicolas Jane, as saying that the accident
happened "because of excessive speed."
The train was
running on a new stretch of a high-speed line linking Paris with Strasbourg
that's due to open next year.
Millions of
travelers use France's extensive TGV network every year.
No comments:
Post a Comment