PRAGUE, Aug 8: An express train crashed on Friday into a road bridge in the Czech Republic as it collapsed on to the tracks, killing at least seven people and injuring 70, rescue services said.

The locomotive and six passenger carriages came off the tracks and were left a mass of twisted metal. Emergency services arrived at the scene to find dead, injured, bags and train seats scattered everywhere.

“It’s horrible. It’s a disaster,” said police spokeswoman Miroslava Michalkova-Salkova.

Fire brigade spokesman Zdenek Nytra said that rescuers had pulled all surviving victims from the wreckage.

The train was travelling at about 135 kilometres an hour as it approached the metal bridge near Studenka in the northwest of the country, said Jan Kucera, a deputy director general of Czech railways.

The bridge, which was being built, fell on the train before it could stop, according to first accounts.

“The driver saw that the bridge was moving and was starting to fall,” Kucera told reporters.

“He immediately slammed on the emergency brakes and hid in the engine compartment of the locomotive. Six seconds later there was the shock — and it was still going at 120 kilometres an hour,” the official added.

“There’s a lot of damage,” he said. Teams of rescuers set about cutting victims free from the wreckage. The injured were taken to 10 hospitals in the region by helicopter and in ambulances.

The train had been going from the Polish city of Krakow to Prague and the Czech and Polish prime ministers Mirek Topolanek and Donald Tusk went immediately to the crash scene.

The dead were five women and one man, the injured included two French nationals and one man who spoke only English, CT public television reported.

There were about 400 people on the train at the time, including a large group heading for a rock concert by British heavy metal band Iron Maiden at a Prague football stadium on Friday night.

“Our carriage was full of young people and we were having fun, then there was the crash, chaos. People were dying, they had no legs and arms. I am alive, I have been born again,” one woman passenger told the CTK news agency.

The driver, who survived, told reporters, “There was nothing I could do.” ”I will never get on a train again,” he added, refusing to give his name.

Sixteen fire brigade units with 30 vehicles were sent to the scene, along with ambulances and helicopters.

It was the worst rail accident in the Czech Republic since June 1995 when 19 mainly young people were killed. —AFP