Rescuers work at night on the site of a train accident on July 12, 2013 at the railway station of Bretigny-sur-Orge/AFP
BRETIGNY-SUR-ORGE, July 13 – Rescue workers searched for survivors early Saturday, hours after a high-speed train derailed just south of Paris, killing at least six people and injuring 30 more.
The accident, in which the train crashed into a station platform on Friday afternoon, is France’s worst rail disaster in 25 years.
Rescue teams, working under arc lights, spent the night checking the wreckage of overturned carriages to see if any passengers were still trapped inside and if there were any more bodies to be recovered.
Witnesses said the site of the crash resembled “a war zone”. One survivor described walking over a decapitated body to escape an overturned carriage.
The train was a regional service heading from Paris to the west central city of Limoges. It derailed as it passed through the station at Bretigny-sur-Orge, about 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Paris.
Such was the violence of the crash that pieces of ballast were found in the town several hundred metres away.
Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, speaking from the accident site late on Friday, told reporters: “The toll is currently six dead, 30 injured, of whom eight are in a serious condition.”
Four carriages of the train were derailed in the incident and three of those overturned.
Passenger Marc Cheutin, 57, told AFP he had to “step over a decapitated person” after the accident to exit the carriage he had been travelling in.
“Shortly after departure, just as I was getting into my book, we felt a first shock that shook the carriage I was in. Then there was a second shock and the carriage lifted up, then a third and a fourth and the carriage went over on its side,” he said.
A witness who had been waiting for a train at the station, Vianey Kalisa, told AFP: “I saw a lot of wounded people, women and children trapped inside (the carriages).
“I was shaking like a child. People were screaming. One man’s face was covered in blood. It was a like a war zone.”
In the immediate aftermath of the accident, dazed survivors, some in blood stained clothing, stood near mangled train wagons and the crushed remains of a station platform.
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