GENEVA, Sept. 11-- A locomotive slammed into a five-carriage train at a station in the Swiss Alps in central Switzerland on Monday, lightly injuring 33 people on board but with no fatalities or life-threatening injuries, according to police. The accident happened at around 11:30 a.m. at the main station of Andermatt, a small town in the central Swiss canton of Uri, when around 100 passengers, mostly schoolchildren, were on board. Twenty-five of those injured had been taken to hospital, but most were quickly released. One child was being kept in hospital overnight with a suspected concussion. The locomotive, then at a speed of only 15 to 20 km per hour, was supposed to move from the back of the five-carriage train to the front on a parallel track, but instead drove into the convoy it had just detached from, according to a spokesperson from the Matterhorn-Gotthard-Bahn, the rail company operating the rail line. Fortunately the slamming appeared to have done very little material damage, and local police said there were neither fatalities nor life-threatening injuries. A local TV staff member also described the accident as nothing serious, as there appeared to be no structural damage to the train at all. However, three rescue helicopters and around a dozen ambulances were sent to the scene, local media reported, adding that police and Swiss transportation have opened an investigation into the accident. |