Poland Train Crash Kills 15
Two trains running on the same track collided head-on in southern Poland late Saturday, leaving 15 people dead and 56 injured—the worst train disaster in Poland in more than 20 years.
Several of the passengers were foreigners, including people from Ukraine, Spain and France, but none of them appeared to be among the dead or badly injured, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.
An unnamed passenger interviewed on the all-news station TVN24 said “I felt the blow” of the collision. “I hit the person in front of me. The lights went out. Everything flew. We flew over the compartment like bags. We could hear screams. We prayed.”
Rescue workers were bringing in heavy equipment Sunday to try and free a corpse from the mangled wreckage of the train, while the injured are being treated in several area hospitals. A doctor in one, Szymon Nowak, said many of the injured were in a serious condition, with some in artificially induced comas.
The accident in the southern town of Szczekociny comes less than three months before millions of football fans will start crisscrossing the country—many by train—to watch matches at the Euro 2012 football championships, which is being co-hosted by Ukraine.
“It’s a very, very sad day and night in the history of Polish railways and for all of us,” Mr. Tusk said.
Poland, which is still recovering from decades of communist rule, doesn’t have the high-speed trains common in Western Europe. However, it does have a fast service between some key cities, and trains are generally seen as safe and used by many in the country of 38 million.