A packed train has crashed into the end of the track in a Buenos Aires railway station, killing at least 40 morning commuters and injuring more than 550 others, local media reports.
The commuter train came in too fast and hit the barrier at the end of the platform at about 20km per hour, smashing the front of the engine and destroying the coaches behind it, Juan Schiavi, the country’s transportation secretary, said at the Once station on Wednesday.
“There are people still trapped, people alive, and there may have been fatalities. We don’t know if there are dead people” in the wreckage, Schiavi said.
One coaches penetrated nearly 20ft into the next, he said.
Monica Yanakiev, a journalist at the scene of the train crash, told Al Jazeera, that “there are between 30 and 60 people still trapped in the train”, with ambulances filling the streets.
“The last report, which has not been confirmed yet, is that a seven-year-old boy apparently died in the crash,” she said. “There are three or four hospitals that are crowded with victims” of the accident.
Most damaged was the first coach, where passengers make space for bicycles. Survivors told the TeleNoticias channel that many people were injured by metal and glass.
Passengers said windows exploded as the tops of train cars separated from their floors. The trains are usually packed with people standing between the seats, and many were thrown into each other and to the floor by the force of the hard stop.
Many people suffered bruises, and many with lesser injuries were waiting for attention on the Once station’s platforms as helicopters and more than a dozen ambulances took the most seriously injured to nearby hospitals.
“This machine left the shop yesterday and the brakes worked well. From what we know, it braked without problems at previous stations. At this point I don’t want to speculate about the causes,” Ruben Sobrero, union chief on the Sarmiento line, told Radio La Red.
The motorman has been hospitalised and the union has not been able to speak with him yet, Sobrero said.
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