Twenty-five people have been injured after two passenger trains collided near the northern town of Slupsk.

The accident happened at 9.10 CET at the Kobrzyn station after one of the trains entered the opposite track and crashed head-on with the other train.

“The rail switch probably did not work properly because of the extreme heat and the trains, which were supposed to pass one another, instead crashed,” says a witness of the accident, Artur Gajek. An ad-hoc commission will investigate the cause of the accident.

Twenty-five people have been injured, five of them seriously, as a result of the accident. “All the victims have been taken to hospitals in Slupsk, Miastko and Slawno,” says Grzegorz Ferlin from the local police. A rescue action is under way to aid other passengers.

It will take several hours to remove the destroyed trains from the track and restore railway connections between Szczecinek and Slupsk. “Meanwhile passengers travelling to either of the towns will be transported by bus,” assured PKP Polish Railways spokesman Krzysztof Lancucki. (mg/mmj)

Source: IAR, PAP