Czech police seek to identify two victims of train crash
August 11, 2008 - 0:0
PRAGUE (AFP) -- Czech police on Saturday were still trying to identify two victims the day after a freak train crash that killed seven people and left 67 others injured, the interior ministry said.
Police have asked for help from Polish authorities, sending them photographs of the two women and their personal effects, a ministry official, Lenka Ptackova-Melicharova, said.The accident occurred Friday when a Eurocity train traveling from the southern Polish city of Krakow to the Czech capital Prague slammed into a road bridge which collapsed during construction seconds before the train's passage.
The freak nature of the accident was underlined when rail investigators later revealed that the train had been running 10 minutes late as it approached the metal bridge near Studenka in the northwest of the country.
Czech authorities said the other victims of the crash were a Czech woman between 35 to 40 years old, a young Polish woman, two Czech men aged 19 and 30, and a young Ukrainian man, the Czech news agency CTK reported.
It was the worst rail accident in the Czech Republic since June 1995, when 19 mainly young people were killed when a local train derailed at Kruna.
An interior ministry spokeswoman said the train was carrying 123 people, including a large group of Czech, Polish and Slovakian.