Nine people were killed and nearly 90 injured in Turkey when a high speed train collided with a locomotive and crashed into a station platform and overpass in an Ankara suburb early yesterday, officials said.
The Ankara public prosecutor said 86 people were injured. Health Minister Fahrettin Koca earlier said 34 of those injured were still in hospital for treatment.
Rescuers worked to free people trapped under the mangled wreckage at Marsandiz train station, 8km (5 miles) from central Ankara.
It was not clear at which speed the train and locomotive were travelling when the collision occurred.
There was light snow on the tracks.
The train had been heading from Ankara to the central Turkish province of Konya and was not due to stop at Marsandiz.
Ankara Governor Vasip Sahin said the locomotive, which lay battered 20m (22 yards) further ahead, carried out track inspections.
Three train drivers were among the nine killed in the crash, Transport Minister Cahit Turhan told reporters on the scene.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that current information indicated a German man was among those killed in the crash, but gave no further details.
There were 206 passengers on the high speed train, according to state-owned Anadolu news agency, which also reported that the Ankara state prosecutor’s office had launched an investigation.
Turkey has been developing a network of high-speed rail links during Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 16-year-old rule as it looks to ease the burden on increasingly congested highways.
The train accident comes less than six months after 24 people were killed in a train crash in northwestern Turkey in a series of several fatal accidents in recent years.
Turkish President Erdogan said three people had been detained over yesterday’s crash.
In a speech in Ankara, he vowed those responsible would be held to account.
The three were employees of the Turkish state railways agency who were detained over suspected negligence, according to state news agency Anadolu.
Transport Minister Turhan said the accident took place six minutes after the train left Ankara as it entered the Marsandiz station.
Images published by Turkish media showed some wagons had derailed and debris from the train scattered on the track.
The windows of one wagon were completely broken while another wagon had been smashed after hitting the footbridge, which also collapsed, an AFP correspondent at the scene said.
The correspondent saw at least seven bodies taken away as rescue workers searched the blue and white wagons covered with debris.
Turkish Red Crescent relief workers distributed blankets and tea to the survivors, who were gathered on a road near the scene that had been blocked to traffic.
A female witness whose name was not given told NTV broadcaster that the passenger train had not yet increased its speed when the crash happened.
A relative of one of those aboard the train told the channel that some passengers had broken windows and then safely exited the wagons.
One of those killed was Berahitdin Albayrak, a science lecturer and former vice-chancellor at Ankara University, the institution said on Twitter.
Later trains from Konya to Ankara and vice versa were cancelled.
The Ankara to Konya high-speed route was launched in 2011 and was followed in 2014 with a high-speed link between Ankara and Istanbul.
In July 24 people were killed and hundreds more injured after a train derailed in Tekirdag province, northwest Turkey, due to ground erosion following heavy rains.
In March 2014, a commuter train smashed into a minibus on a railway track in the southern Turkish province of Mersin, which left 10 dead.
In January 2008, nine people were killed when a train derailed in the Kutahya region south of Istanbul because of faulty tracks.
Turkey’s worst rail disaster in recent history was in July 2004 when 41 people were killed and 80 injured after a high-speed train derailed in the northwestern province of Sakarya.
Firefighters and medics are seen at the scene of the train crash in Ankara.
