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Roundup: 3 dead, 9 injured in Belgian rail crash

Xinhua, June 7, 2016 Adjust font size:

Three people were killed and nine injured in a crash between a passenger train and a freight train at about 11 p.m. on Sunday local time in Saint-Georges-sur-Meuse, a town in the French-speaking Wallonia region of Belgium, near the city of Liege.

"A passenger train struck a freight train on the same track in Saint-Georges-sur-Meuse. Three people were killed in the accident and nine wounded people were taken to hospital," Frederic Sacre, a spokesman for the Belgian rail infrastructure operator Infrabel, told Xinhua.

The passenger train, travelling from Mouscron to Liers with about 40 passengers on board, caught up with a preceding goods train on the same track and hit it from behind, the spokesman added.

The train with passengers on board rammed the back of the stationary goods train "at a relatively high speed," said Francis Dejon, mayor of Saint-Georges-sur-Meuse at a press conference.

"The passenger train is in a terrible state, it's quite a sight. The first carriage has folded up on itself," Dejon added.

In the shock of the crash, two of the six carriages derailed and ended up on their sides, a Xinhua reporter noted on the scene.

On Monday afternoon, the identity of one of the three deceased had been made public by Belgian rail operator SNCB. The passenger train driver, 47-year-old Marc De Geyter, died in the crash. The other two deceased are passengers.

At midday on Monday, only one injured passenger remained in a critical condition in hospital, Belgian public broadcaster RTBF reported.

The Belgian prosecutor and investigators are on the scene to determine the causes and circumstances surrounding the accident. A helicopter has been photographing the scene of the accident from above.

Infrabel spokesman Frederic Sacre told Xinhua that nothing had been ruled out but the crash appeared to be an accident linked to an earlier lightning strike on the line.

The SNCB on Twitter said at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday -- an hour and a half before the crash -- that there were signalling problems on line 125 between Amay and Engis, which was subsequently fixed with rail traffic returning to normal that evening.

On July 3, 2008, a similar accident occurred at the same location in similar circumstances: a passenger train struck a goods train, injuring 40 people. In that case, a court found the driver of the passenger train to have been at fault. Endit