At least one killed, 30 injured after train derails in the Netherlands

Dutch police have begun an investigation into a dramatic early-morning rail crash near The Hague in which two trains collided with a crane working on the tracks. The consensus is that only the time of day prevented much more substantial loss of life and mass casualties.

The collision happened shortly before 3.30am on Tuesday when an intercity train carrying about 50 passengers on the line between Leiden and The Hague collided with the crane. Three of its carriages were derailed, and two of them plunged down an embankment into a field in pitch darkness.

“It was like something from a movie”, said one passenger, Anwar Akrouh (20). “There was a huge bang. Suddenly the lights went out. There were screams. People were desperate to get out. I saw three people injured, one of them the driver. It was incredibly intense.”

It appears that the crane, which should have been operating on two lines closed for scheduled maintenance, may have found itself instead on an “active” line where it was hit in quick succession by a goods train and then by the passenger service.

Tories’ greatest disservice to the UK has been to misunderstand the US

---

‘Let us wake up’: Macron warns of far-right on German trip as he and Scholz wrangle over hard issues

---

How Mexico’s president won over the working class

---

A ‘heroine of truth’: Nazi-hunting couple who tracked down Klaus Barbie honoured by Macron

---

Two investigations were under way by noon on Tuesday: one by the police who said they would assess whether there was a case for criminal charges and would forward their findings to the public prosecution service, and the other by the Dutch safety board.

In the Netherlands, NS is the train operator while ProRail is responsible for the track and network maintenance. Surveying the scene, ProRail chief executive John Foppen said the investigations would focus on how there could have been any contact at all between the trains and the crane.

“I’ve worked on railways for 17 years and never seen anything like this,” he said at a trackside briefing. “I simply don’t understand how it could have happened.”

By midafternoon the death toll remained almost miraculously at one person, with 19 treated for serious injuries in hospitals in Leiden and Utrecht and roughly another 20 treated for shock and more minor injuries at the scene.

Construction contractors BAM, who were working on the track maintenance, confirmed that one of their employees, the crane driver, had been killed.

The driver of the double-decker passenger train sustained multiple fractures and is in hospital, while the driver of the goods train was examined at the scene before being allowed to go home.

It emerged that the collision brought down power lines above the track and these started a fire when they landed on top of the carriages. The cables were made safe by the fire service before passengers were helped to clamber through the windows to escape.

Serious rail accidents are extremely rare in the Netherlands.

King Willem-Alexander, who visited the scene at lunchtime, expressed his sympathy and thanked local residents who had taken shocked passengers into their homes in the immediately aftermath.

That was echoed on Twitter by prime minister, Mark Rutte, who described the accident as “dreadful”.