Rescuers were still searching for the driver of one of the trains that collided head-on while traveling down the same stretch of track linking the small towns of Corato and Andria in the southeastern Puglia region in Italy’s heel.
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One witness described the wreckage as an “apocalyptic scene”.
Only five of the victims had identity documents on their person, the rest presumably in wallets or bags sent flying across carriages on impact, making it more hard for authorities to name the dead, La Stampa said.
The wreck happened in a relatively remote region.
The bodies of a mother and child were pulled from the wreckage, while a trapped six-year old boy was found alive, next to his dead grandmother.
In the hours after the crash, officials updated the death toll from 11 to 20 and said dozens of people had been taken to hospital, some with serious injuries. “One of the two trains was too far, and investigators will tell us which one”, Massimo Nitti, the general manager of Ferrotramviaria, said. “We need to determine the cause of the error”, Commander Giancarlo Conticchio from the railway police said.
The stretch of track is operated by a regional rail company Ferrotramviaria.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
There was no immediate reason given for the collision, which took place in the late morning.
He said: “It is a disaster, as if a plane crashed”. Last December the company had announced plans to install the Italian SCMT automatic train protection system on the Ruvo – Bitonto section of the Bari – Barletta line.
Transport Minister Graziano Delrio was at the scene with ministry inspectors and local prosecutors to survey the wreckage. “This is now the hypothesis we are working with”, Corato police told France Info.
It was not clear how many people had been on the trains. A dean at a university in nearby Bari told the newspaper that about 10,000 passengers traverse the line per day.
Recovery operations using a giant crane and rescue dogs continued through the night and into Wednesday to remove the mangled debris of the two commuter trains that slammed into one another just before noon Tuesday in the neat olive groves of Puglia. Forty-two passengers were killed when some of the carriages plunged into the ravine.
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There have been a growing series of accidents in the 21st century, however, with the 2002 derailing in Rometta Messina, killing eight, and a head-on collision between a passenger and a freight train near Crevalcore, which killed 17 in 2005. “Italy is continuing to invest in high speed rail, often leaving the railway system in the south behind”, Codacons head Carlo Rienzi observed in a statement.
