18 killed in Belgium train collision

Eighteen people were confirmed dead after two passenger trains collided outside the town of Halle, south of Brussels, Monday morning, officials said.

According to the latest official count, 15 men and three women died in the collision, a spokesman at a regional crisis centre set up to coordinate the response to the disaster said.

A spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutor's office said that 18 to 20 people had been killed in the smash, but that reports that the death toll could reach 25 were exaggerated.

The new casualty count means that Monday's accident rivals the worst train crash in Belgium's post-war history, dating to 1974, when 18 travellers died when their train derailed at high speed.

Earlier, officials had confirmed that 12 people had died in the crash, but that rescue workers were still pulling bodies from the wreckage, raising the likelihood that the death toll would rise.

The accident occurred at around 8.30 am (0100 IST), as a north-bound train heading into Brussels collided almost head-on at a junction with a south-bound commuter train leaving the city.

The impact thrust the front carriages of both trains up into the air, crumpling the following carriages, smashing several of them off the tracks and sending a shock wave through nearby buildings.

"There was a bright light, and then an explosion," eyewitness Nathalie Evenepoel said.

"It was like an earthquake: the loud bang woke me up," said 21-year-old Wire Leire, who lives just 50 metres from the tracks.

Passengers said that they were thrown into the air or into one another at the moment of the crash, with people and baggage tumbled into heaps.

TV footage from the scene showed the walking wounded slipping and stumbling across the snowy tracks as rescue teams carried the more seriously injured away.

The Brussels prosecutor's office said that around 80 people had been injured, 20 of them seriously.

One of the trains was travelling from the Flemish town of Leuven, east of Brussels, to Braine-le-Comte, south of the city. The other was travelling from the town of Quievrain, on the French border, to the industrial city of Liege in eastern Belgium.

Provincial governor Lodewijk De Witte said that the accident had probably been caused by the southbound train running through a red light, but that that was still a preliminary analysis.

Reacting to the crash, the Flemish Red Cross launched an emergency appeal for blood from donors with blood types 'O' and 'A'.

Prime Minister Yves Leterme cut short a visit to Kosovo to come to the scene of the crash, while his predecessor Herman Van Rompuy - now the president of the council of European Union member states - sent a message expressing his "shock and sorrow" at the accident.

The crash caused widespread closures on railway lines leading into Brussels Midi station, the city's main terminus. International Eurostar and Thalys departures to London were halted, with Thalys services from Paris to Cologne forced to detour around Brussels.

EU leaders based in Brussels were quick to send their condolences. As well as Van Rompuy, the presidents of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, both addressed messages to the victims and their families.u00a0

The accident happened during the morning rush hour and after an overnight snowfall. Snow continued to fall throughout the morning, hampering rescue efforts.