Rescue Workers Hunt For Crash Victims

Press, Volume C, Issue 29540, 15 June 1961, Page 15

Rescue Workers Hunt For Crash Victims

tfii.Z Press Association—CoronaM) STUTTGART, June 14. Rescue workers in falling rain and under lights dug all night, searching for more victims of yesterday’s collision of two passenger trains near Stuttgart, agencies reported. Four people are still believed trapped in the wreckage, but all are feared dead.

The known death roll rose to 35 late last night and about 50 people are hurt, 20 of them seriously. Reuter said. Five women are among the dead. Priests prayed at the riverside and said the last rites over the dead as they were laid into their coffins. The two electric trains smashed head-on into each

other at 60 miles an hour just outside a station about six miles from Stuttgart They hurtled down an embankment to within 25ft of the swirling waters of the river An official inquiry into the cause of the accident is taking place on the spot. The West German Chancellor (Dr. Konrad Adenauer) has sent his “deep sympathy”

to the families of the dead and injured. Thousands of people watched silently from the river banks and the vine-yard-covered slopes of the valley late last night as the rescue crews worked on. Railway salvage teams, helped by police, firemen and soldiers, worked feverishly to prevent the carriages from slipping into the water. Many of the bodies recovered were badly mutilated. Hospital authorities could only identify 18 of them, chiefly by the season tackaM they were carrying. Tffie German Federal Railways issued an official statement last night in which U paid the crash was caused by the failure of the Stuttgartbound tram to obey a red <top signal and halt, the Associated Press reported The drivers of both trains were among the dead.