French school bus-train crash death toll rises

The death toll from a crash between a school bus and a train in southern France has risen to six after two 11-year-old girls died of their injuries.

Four teenagers died on Thursday in the crash at a level crossing in Millas, near the city of Perpignan. Eighteen others were injured. At least eight people, most of them children, remain in hospital in with life-threatening injuries.

An inquiry into “manslaughter and accidental injury” has been opened by the local prosecutor Jean-Jacques Fagni, who promised families of the victims that investigators would establish the exact cause of the collision.

The impact was so severe that it virtually ripped the bus in half and forced the train off the tracks.

Police interviewed the express train driver on Friday morning but were unable to speak to the bus driver, a 48-year-old woman who is in hospital with serious injuries.

The school bus was 12 miles (20km) west of Perpignan, in the Pyrénées-Orientales, heading towards Villefranche-de-Conflent when it was hit. It was carrying pupils from the Christian Bourquin secondary school who were heading home to two villages, Saint Féliu d’Amont and Saint Féliu d’Avall.

The mayor of Saint Féliu d’Amont, Robert Olive, said the scene of the crash was a “horrific sight”.

“I don’t know what happened, but the school bus had been actually cut in two by the passing train,” Olive told the local radio France Bleu Roussillon. “The bus appeared to have exploded. People were being very dignified but everyone was shocked.”

The government announced it was sending a special representative to the area to help the victims’ families.

The prime minister, Édouard Philippe, who met victims’ families in Perpignan, described the accident as a “terrible drama”.

“The circumstances have not yet been determined and will be the subject of a legal inquiry to throw light on the circumstances of the drama.”

He said the severity of the crash had made it difficult to identify some of the victims.

President Emmanuel Macron expressed his condolences on Twitter. “My thoughts go out to the victims of this terrible accident involving a school bus and their families. The state is doing everything in its power to support the rescue operation.”

The accident happened at an automatic crossing on a two-lane road as the bus crossed a single-track railway line secured by a simple striped barrier and warning lights in each direction.

A spokeswoman for France’s national rail company, SNCF, said the train was travelling at 50mph at the time of the accident, and had 25 people on board. Three of them were slightly injured.

“The railway crossing was a normal one, well equipped and lit up. Several witnesses have confirmed that the barriers were down, so they were working, but all this will be the subject of an inquiry,” she said.

About 95 firefighters, 10 rescue vehicles and four helicopters as well as emergency medics attended the scene.

Witnesses from the train told the local newspaper L’Indépendant they had felt a “very violent impact”.

“We thought the train was going to come off the rails and turn over,” one passenger named Barbara told the newspaper. “Afterwards there were helicopters mobilised to take away the injured.”

The incident is one of the worst in France involving a vehicle carrying children since 1982, when a holiday coach caught fire at Beaune, in central France, killing 53 people, including 44 children.

In 2016, France recorded 111 collisions between trains and vehicles at railroad crossings, killing 31 people. About 90% of crashes involve cars or light vehicles, and in almost all cases the vehicle driver is found to have been responsible.