Train Crash in Ankara, Turkey, Kills at Least 9 and Injures Dozens

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The passenger train involved in the crash in Ankara, Turkey, had more than 200 people on board.CreditCreditAdem Altan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By The New York Times

Dec. 13, 2018

A passenger train collided head-on with a maintenance locomotive in Ankara, Turkey, Thursday morning, and officials said that at least nine people were killed, with dozens of others injured.

The crash pushed two carriages of the train off the track, where they smashed into the support legs of an elevated covered walkway, causing it to collapse onto the train. Parts of the train and the walkway also struck and damaged a nearby building.

Health Minister Fahrettin Koca told the broadcaster NTV that 84 people were injured, including two who were in critical condition.

The leader of a railroad employees’ union said the line should not have been operating because the area did not have an automated signal system, leaving it to traffic controllers and train drivers to coordinate movements.

Three people were arrested in connection with the crash, and prosecutors were assigned to investigate it.

The train was carrying 206 passengers south from Ankara, the capital city, toward Konya Province, the semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported.

At about 6:36 a.m., “the train leaving Ankara station crashed into the engine turning back from” doing track work, Transportation Minister Mehmet Cahit Turhan told reporters.

The dead included the drivers of the locomotive and the train, the minister said, adding that there was no one trapped under the debris.

The collision came a little more than five months after a passenger train derailed near Corlu, a city northwest of Istanbul, killing 25 people and injuring hundreds of others.

In that accident in July, the government said that heavy rains had caused a drainage tunnel under the track to collapse. But the Construction Engineers Chamber blamed the crash on lack of controls and weak infrastructure.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used huge and costly public works projects to present an image of a dynamic, growing Turkey. Critics say the projects are a waste, and accidents like the July derailment have raised questions about whether the government has spent enough on maintaining existing infrastructure.

In 2004, a high-speed passenger train derailed on a line between Ankara and Istanbul, killing 41 people, just a month after Mr. Erdogan cut the ribbon on the service.

In Thursday’s crash, “the biggest cause of this accident is the lack of signalization system,” said Hasan Bektas, the head of the United Trade Union of Transport Employees.

He said the government had reopened the line, which had been closed for renovation, in April, to gain popularity before elections in June.

“The renewal of the track was completed but the signalization system was not,” he said. “The drivers were communicating with the control center via radio.”