A crowded passenger bus collided with a train in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, killing 37 people and injuring 12, police said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Yevheny Kravets said the collision occurred on Tuesday morning outside the town of Marhanets in the Dnipropetrovsk region after the bus attempted to cross the track, ignoring a siren that indicated an oncoming train. Rescuers, medics and investigators are working at the scene of the crash. The injured passengers are in critical condition, Kravets said.
Rescue workers were sifting through the wreckage with the expectation that there may be more victims still in the wreckage, according to an Emergency Ministry statement. Survivors were being treated in a local hospital for injuries ranging from moderate to critical, officials said.
Vasyl Frannik, Vice Minister of the Interior, and Valery Lozovoi, chief of Ukraine’s traffic police, were heading up the accident investigation, according to an Interior Ministry statement.
The collision took place in Ukraine’s eastern Dnipetrovsk province, at an automatically-controlled road crossing of a regional rail line. Road barriers were down and warning lights at the crossing were functioning. Police are investigating why the bus driver apparently ignored them, according to a statement from Ukraine’s national rail company Ukrzhelesnitsia.
The Mercedes microbus had been travelling between the town Marganets and the city Nikopol, and most of the passengers were employed at a local factory, according to a Korrespondent web magazine report
