French Trains Collide Head-on; 24 Killed

An express train packed with vacationers collided head-on with a local train in the south of France on Saturday, killing 24 people and injuring at least 180. It was the country’s deadliest train wreck in more than a decade.

Twenty-nine of the injured were hospitalized in serious condition while the others were treated at the site of the flaming crash in the Perigord region, police said.

The train wreck, the second fatal crash in France in less than a month and the worst in 13 years, marred the first day of the traditional August vacation and grand exodus from Paris.

Rescue workers extricated about 45 people trapped in the tangled wreckage and firefighters put out the blaze four hours after the late afternoon collision at the nearby hamlet of Flaujac.

The express traveling at 75 m.p.h. plowed into the small train moving in the opposite direction on the single track because a regional rail controller thought the express had passed, railway officials said.

The first two cars of the express train telescoped into the smaller train, and five cars were tossed like toys into a field. The engine of one of the trains immediately burst into flames.

Villagers said the small train, an engine and two passenger cars, waited every day on a double track at the little Flaujac station for express trains to pass before continuing its slower way on the single track.

“Today, the express was 15 minutes late because of the August rush and the circulation chief in a nearby station thought the express had passed and gave permission to the small train to go ahead on the single track,” a Flaujac restaurant owner said.