Newsday

40 Hurt in Nice-Venice Train Crash

ROME, Italy (AP) -- A passenger train traveling from Nice to Venice crashed into a service rail car near the France-Italy border, injuring 40 people and derailing the locomotive and two passenger cars.

The express train had just left the station in Bordighera on Monday night when it plowed into a service car that had crossed onto the tracks. At the point of the crash, the rails had narrowed to only one set of tracks, the reports said.

Six people remained hospitalized late Tuesday in Bordighera, on the Ligurian coast 45 miles east of Nice. None of the injuries were life-threatening, Italian news reports said.

Railroad officials said service on the affected part of the line would likely resume overnight.

''We had just left the Bordighera station perfectly on time -- at 10:12 p.m.,'' said Paola Gabrielli, 31, who was being treated for shock at a local hospital. Her husband suffered a broken leg.

''After a few minutes I heard a tremendous bang,'' the ANSA news agency quoted her as saying. ''The light suddenly went out throughout the whole train. Outside it was completely dark and all you could hear were people screaming with fright.''

Prosecutor Francesco Pescetto, who is launching an investigation into why the service car was on the rails, suggested human error was to blame.

Some 250 people were onboard the train, which was traveling from the French beach resort of Nice along the coast and across northern Italy to the canals of Venice.

The uninjured passengers were transferred by bus to Genoa where they were put on a special train to continue onto their final destination.

AP-NY-05-01-01 1451EDT< 

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), May 01, 2001