London — At least 13 people were killed Wednesday when a high-speed passenger train struck two vehicles on the tracks and then collided with an oncoming freight train.
About 70 passengers were injured, 30 of them seriously, in the latest blow to Britain's troubled rail industry. Police rescue teams were working into the night to recover 11 of the dead and warned they might find additional bodies.
About 100 people were thought to be aboard the train but a precise count was difficult to obtain because rail passengers are not required to make reservations, according to Great North Eastern Railway, the passenger train's operator.
Villagers reported hearing a loud crunching sounded as the crash occurred at 6:12 a.m. Those who went to the scene described finding "absolute chaos and devastation" with "mangled pieces of metal everywhere."
They came upon shocked passengers, some lying helpless inside the train cars and others worried that diesel fumes would ignite and trap them in fire.
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who visited the site Wednesday, provided the House of Commons with preliminary details last night. He said that a Land Rover towing another vehicle on a trailer left the road near Selby in Yorkshire, about 200 miles north of London.
It apparently tumbled about 100 yards down an embankment and landed on the tracks of Britain's east coast main line, which runs from London to Edinburgh.
Moments later, as the driver of the Land Rover was making a desperate call to police from his mobile phone to warn them of the danger, the 4:45 a.m. train from Newcastle struck the stranded vehicles at an estimated 125 mph and dragged them a quarter-mile down the track.
The driver of the Land Rover was unhurt but suffered shock and was unable to talk to police until last night.
The passenger train initially derailed but remained upright. Prescott said it was "almost immediately" hit head-on by a northbound freight train traveling at 60 mph and carrying more than 1,000 tons of coal.
The passenger train's front car, a first class car, was thrown into a muddy field alongside the tracks, while eight other cars lay crumpled behind it.
Janine Edwards, a 22-year-old drama student from York headed to a drama school interview in London, who was riding in the middle of the passenger train, told reporters that she heard "screaming and shouting and the lights went out."
"I held onto the table in front of me and then there was a huge impact," she said.
"The man opposite me was streaming with blood. The window next to him was smashed and the frame had come out and hit him. His wife was sitting next to him and was covered in his blood."
Some of the injured waited as long as seven hours before rescuers could free them from the twisted wreckage.
A field hospital was set up in a nearby barn, and ministers rushed to the site.
Ambulances and two RAF helicopters took the injured to area hospitals, where the most serious casualties were treated for head, chest and spinal injuries.
The freak sequence of events, on one of Britain's busiest rail lines, occurred as the country's rail industry was beginning to regain travelers' confidence.
Two fatal crashes killed 35 passengers in the past 18 months.
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