At least 39 dead in Montenegro train crash

Rescuers inspect a derailed train in Bioce. It is believed that up to 30 people have been killed. Picture / Reuters

BIOCE, Serbia and Montenegro - At least 39 people were killed when the brakes failed on a train carrying more than 200 passengers, causing it to jump the tracks and crash into a ravine in mountainous Montenegro today.

The government said 135 people were injured, 75 of them children thought to be returning from family ski trips. Trees slowed the plunge of the front coaches and they came to rest 40 metres (yards) from the river below.

Army and police rescuers climbed down the steep slope in darkness to reach those trapped, smashing windows to extract survivors from a coach lying on its side.

"Thirty-nine are dead, 135 are injured," Montenegro Deputy Prime Minister Miroslav Ivanisevic told a news conference after an emergency cabinet meeting.

All injured were evacuated by mid-evening and rescuers were working on the recovery of the last two corpses in the wreckage.

"The accident occurred because of a failure of the train's braking system," Interior Minister Jusuf Kalamperovic said.

The local passenger train from the northern city of Bijelo Polje to the southern port of Bar derailed at Bioce, about 10 km outside the capital, Podgorica.

Many of the passengers were thought to be families returning home from skiing trips.

A Reuters photographer at the scene saw corpses lined up on the ground under blankets. "There were mobile phones going off constantly all over the crash site among the bushes and the rocks," he said.

President Filip Vujanovic and Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic rushed to the crash site in a gorge of the Moraca river.

"A terrible tragedy happened at Bioce and everything is being done to reduce the number of casualties as much as possible," Vujanovic told reporters.

The state declared three days of mourning. Transport Minister Andrija Lompar and National Railways chief Ranko Medenica tendered their resignations.

Doctors in the Adriatic republic of 650,000 people appealed for blood donors as crowds of onlookers and worried relatives flocked to the main hospital. Some of the injured were taken to the hospital in the trunks of private cars.

One survivor spoke of people screaming in panic and lifeless bodies lying on the rocks. He said he was in a carriage that stayed on the rails inside a tunnel when the brakes failed.

"We were lucky because of that tunnel," said Ivan Stanic. "Luckily, I was in the last wagon," he told reporters.

- REUTERS