TURKEY: Two trains, one an inter-city express, crashed head-on in western Turkey yesterday, killing nine people and injuring scores more, a local politician at the scene said.
The trains ploughed into each other in the late afternoon near Tavsancil in northwestern Turkey, around 40 miles from Istanbul and not far from the spot where 39 people died last month when a new, super express train came off the rails.
Salih Gun, a local member of parliament, said nine people were killed and many injured, including seven seriously.
Television pictures showed police, troops and ambulance workers clambering over crumpled carriages and using power tools to try to free survivors from the wreckage.
Passengers sat by the track holding bandages to head wounds. Military police earlier put the death toll at six and said 100 people were injured.
One of the trains was an express going from Ankara to Istanbul and the other was travelling from Istanbul to the town of Adapazari.
Around 171 passengers and nine staff were believed to have been on the express train. Numbers on the other train were unclear.
A highway official said the Istanbul-Adapazari train suffered the worst of the head-on crash, with four of its carriages damaged and one lying on its side. One of the carriages in the Ankara-Istanbul train was damaged.
Witnesses said on Turkish television that there were many casualties in the front carriages of both trains.