Regional services collide head-on at Granges-pres-Marnand, killing a driver and leaving more than 35 injured, authorities say
Two trains have collided in Switzerland, killing one of the drivers and injuring at least 35 people, five of them seriously, according to authorities.
The crash happened at Granges-pres-Marnand in the canton of Vaud as one of the trains headed to Lausanne and the other to Payerne. Between them they were carrying about 40 people.
Vaud police spokesman Jean-Christophe Sauterel said: "These are regional trains. The speeds are a little lower and even if one deeply regrets the likely loss of life of one person as well as five serious injuries, the situation could have been much more catastrophic."
Public TV station SRF quoted Vaud canton police spokesman Pierre-Olivier Gaudard as saying that one person had yet to be recovered from the wreckage. This was understood to be one of the drivers.
The crash happened near the station of Granges-pres-Marnand shortly before 7pm local time on a regional line about 31 miles (50km) south-west of the capital, Bern.
Photographs from the site showed the two regional trains locked together, partly lifted off the tracks
by the force of the collision.
Last week a high-speed derailment in Spain killed 79 people.