8 Die in France as Express Train Hits Truck, Derails

SAINT-PIERRE-DU-VAUVRAY, France — A passenger train traveling at about 100 m.p.h. derailed after smashing into a tractor-trailer truck at 9:15 a.m. today at a controlled crossing. Officials said eight people were killed and at least 50 others injured, including five Americans.

The locomotive and the first four cars jumped the rails. One car crashed into a home along the tracks in this community, 62 miles west of Paris.

Fire officials at the scene said 10 of the injured were in “grave condition.”

Officials said most of the victims were believed to have been on the train, which was carrying about 600 vacationers. The impact of the collision destroyed the cab of the truck and killed the driver instantly, police said. Flying debris knocked holes in the fronts of nearby homes.

The U.S. Embassy, citing preliminary reports, said five Americans were among the injured. The Embassy said four of the five suffered minor injuries and the fifth was hospitalized in satisfactory condition. Identification of the injured Americans was withheld pending notification of their families.

National police and firefighters, called in from a 60-mile radius, struggled to free passengers from the tangled mass of metal.

Witnesses said the truck became trapped between the crossing gates at an automatic crossing. Ghislaine Laroche, a local resident who was out shopping, said the truck driver got out of the cab and tried unsuccessfully to raise the barriers by hand.

She said he climbed back into the cab and tried to back out through the barriers, but was blocked by a car behind him and was able only to back the trailer off the tracks. The cab was still straddled across the rails when the train hit it, hurling the cab 100 yards.