Eight people dead and around 150 injured in German train crash

•  Two commuter trains collide head-on in Bavaria, south-east Germany

• Eight have died and 150 people are injured, according to reports

• Collision on single-track rail may have been cause by signal failure

• Local police call crash 'the biggest accident we have had in years'

At least Eight people were killed and over a hundred were injured in this early morning when two passenger trains collided in the southern German state of Bavaria, police said.

“The current toll is eight dead, 15 critically injured, 40 severely injured and a total of 100 injured,” said police spokesman Martin Winkler.

He said two trains were involved in the crash near Bad Aibling, around 60 km southeast of the Bavarian capital of Munich. The cause of the accident was not immediately clear.

Regional rail company Bayerische Oberlandbahn said in a statement that “a tragic accident occurred on the single-track route between Rosenheim and Holzkirchen this morning shortly after 7:00 am (0600 GMT)”.

It said the trains of the so-called Meridian line both partially derailed and were wedged into each other.

The regional police force in Upper Bavaria tweeted that several hundred emergency services workers were on the scene in the rural area.

A spokesman for German Federal Police in Bavaria, Matthias Knott, told AP that the crash took place “in an inaccessible region” and that rescue personnel were still in the middle of getting passengers out of the trains.

The rail route was closed to traffic, as well as two local roads.

AFP