At least eight people died and dozens were injured yesterday when two passenger trains crashed head-on along a single track in southern Belgium.
An empty passenger train crashed into another carrying about 80 passengers shortly before 8 a.m. Irish time as it ran along the same track near the southern town of Pecrot, about 20 km east of Brussels, the SNCB spokeswoman, Ms Marie-Louis Donnet said.
Among the dead were the two train drivers and two conductors, she said.
The front of one train ended up on top of the other amid a mass of twisted metal strewn on either side of the track.
Rescue workers were using cranes to clear the wreckage, while dozens of ambulances tended to the wounded.
Paved roads on each side of the track was all that separated the trains from a cluster of houses.
The Belgian Transport Minister, Ms Isabelle Durant, visited the site of the accident. King Albert and the Prime Minister, Mr Guy Verhofstadt, were expected to arrive later in the day.
Ms Donnet told local television that the driver of the empty train was at fault because he ran the train along the wrong track without responding to a barrage of warning signals sent to him along the way.
"We tried as a last resort to cut off the power, but unfortunately it was done too late," she said.
One teenage passenger, who survived the collision, said he did not know that the train had crashed into another until he stepped out to look.
"At first, I thought it was just a derailment . . . but only after I came out did I see that the train was torn up," he told local television. "A woman was crying and people were trying to break the windows from the inside to get out."
Another witness said she heard screeches and then a crash when she came out of her house.
"I was bringing out the bags and heard the train brake," she said. "And then I turned and saw them, one on top of the other."
SNCB spokeswoman Ms Leen Uyterhoeven said the driver of the empty train was going north-east from Ottignies to Louvain, while the train loaded with passengers in four coaches was heading the other way.
The Ottignies-Wavre-Louvain line that they were using has two tracks. "It is not a busy line," she said.
"It's more than certain a human error was at the origin," said SNCB chief executive Mr Etienne Schouppe.
After noticing that the two trains were on the same track, headed for each other, rail operators at a signals control centre in Brussels tried to cut power to the line which would have automatically triggered the emergency brakes.
"It was too late to prevent the collision," said Mr Schouppe, who said it was the only option left to railway controllers. "We have had smaller rail accidents of course, but this sort of accident has not happened in 20 years."