AT LEAST 18 people were killed and as many as 60 injured when two commuter trains crashed head-on near Brussels during the morning rush hour, leaving trapped passengers screaming for help from inside a wrecked carriage.
Survivors told of distressing scenes as gravely injured passengers succumbed to their injuries as they lay on rail tracks in freezing weather.
The force of the collision left the front of the two trains – one from Leuven to Braine-le-Compte, the other an express service bound for Liège from Quiévrain – suspended in the air after they smashed together.
“I was sitting on the train reading my book. It all happened very quickly. We saw people lying on the rails. I saw with my own eyes people dying. It was something else, shocking,” said Santaera Michelle, an office worker in her 30s.
“Normally, I take an earlier train,” she told The Irish Times. “We want to find out what happened.”
Doulin Sébastien, a finance worker who was travelling with his partner, Stéphanie Cardinal, spoke of a “violent shock” at the moment of impact. They were stuck in their carriage amid broken glass for more than 30 minutes before they freed themselves.
“I heard people screaming inside a crushed carriage,” said Yves Gilbert, a middle-aged man who was travelling to work in Brussels.
The collision occurred at about 8.30am in snowy conditions at the village of Buizingen near Halle, an industrial town on the outskirts of Brussels, and led to the suspension throughout yesterday of high-speed train services linking Brussels with Paris and London.
Provincial governor Lodewijk De Witte told reporters that the Leuven train continued past a red light and ploughed into the Liège train, which was running some 10 minutes late. Carriages on one of the trains lay on their side in the aftermath of the crash and overhead electrical lines were severely damaged.
There were 15 men among the dead and three women, officials said. Diplomats said late yesterday that they were not aware of any Irish people being caught up in the collision.
“At the moment of the crash, I was in my bedroom, lying on my bed still sleeping. I heard a big bang and the house was shaking. I went to the window to take a look at what happened there,” said Wira Leire (20), a student whose house overlooks the crash scene.
Mr Leire brought blankets and chairs from his house for the survivors. His neighbour, Nathalie Evenepoel, said her nine-year-old daughter witnessed the crash from the upstairs windows of her house.
“We heard an explosion. She came running down looking for her father.”
As a full-scale emergency operation swung into gear, rescue workers set up a field hospital in the car park of the train station at Halle. The most seriously injured were taken by a fleet of ambulances to 14 hospitals.
Survivors whose injuries were deemed not to be life-threatening were taken to the station waiting room, where people with bandages on their heads and neck braces could be seen. Another survivor, Fabien Jakubowski (31), told how a table rammed into his stomach during the collision. Passengers and luggage were thrown around the carriage by the force of the impact, he said.
“I was a little sleepy. It’s the morning, it’s Monday. At one moment everything stopped . . . Usually I go to the end of the train.
“Today I was late. I put myself in the middle. I guess the people that were in the first three carriages had bad luck.”
Prime Minister Yves Leterme, who cut short a visit abroad, said he was stunned by the accident. Mr Leterme returned to Brussels from Pristina airport in Kosovo just minutes after landing there.