BONN The death toll from a high-speed train crash in Germany hit 96 Friday as investigators began studying the theory that a fractured wheel may have caused the nightmare disaster. A spokesman for relief services said another body had been recovered from the wreckage of the intercity express (ICE) train which derailed and crashed into a highway flyover, bringing down a 300-ton concrete slab onto the carriages on Wednesday. Two other bodies had been retrieved from the train's bar late Thursday just before the operation to recover more bodies was halted due to fading light and fatigue.

A fractured wheel on the first carriage was the only theory so far suggested by German Transport Ministry officials and representatives of the rail company Deutsche Bahn which operates the showpiece ICE trains. Parts of the train found along the track seemed to indicate that the outer metal tyre of a wheel fractured at around six kilometres (four miles) before the train derailed, said ministry spokesman Veit Steinle. According to the theory, the carriage, destabilized by its fractured wheel, may then have become derailed during shunting, 300 metres from the highway flyover, causing the rest of the train to veer off the tracks.

(AFP)