GERMANY: Twenty-three people were killed and 10 injured yesterday after the magnetic-levitation train carrying them crashed in western Germany.
The driverless "Transrapid" train was travelling at 200km/h (124mph) when it collided with a maintenance vehicle blocking the test track shortly before 10am, near the city of Osnabrück.
The two vehicles caught fire, and crumpled metal debris was flung in a 300m (984ft) radius of the accident scene.
Rescue work was hampered because firemen required ladders to reach the train, which sits on a track on four-metre stilts.
They removed 23 dead bodies and rushed 10 people to hospital, whose injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
Police were investigating yesterday why the train - steered from a remote control room - was allowed embark on the 32km (20 mile), eight-minute trip when the track was not clear.
The train has been an attraction in the region for the last 22 years, attracting up to 1,000 passengers daily.
"Normally there can be up to 90 people on the train, so we are lucky that there were relatively few on board today," said Herman Bröring, a local fireman.
The Transrapid is the jewel in the German engineering crown: it has no wheels and hovers above a special magnetic track.
With no wheel-track friction, the train can reach speeds of more than 400km/h (248mph).
However, the train, which has not been built commercially in Germany, has attracted criticism as an expensive white elephant.
Yesterday's accident could mean the end of the line for it, just weeks after a fire broke out on the world's only commercially operating Transrapid train in Shanghai.
Travelling at three times the speed of normal steel-wheel trains, the Transrapid floats on a magnetic cushion one cm above the track. It has no fuel source on board.