A passenger train traveling from Istanbul to Denizli overturned near Kütahya in western Türkiye early Sunday, killing nine people and injuring at least 27 others, transport authorities said. The accident occurred around 2:00 am, roughly 300 kilometres short of its destination.
The train was carrying 436 passengers and moving at approximately 65 kilometres per hour when two carriages left the tracks. State rail operator TCDD attributed the derailment to cracked or broken rail. Five of the injured were in serious condition; rescue crews clearing the wreckage found no additional victims beneath the overturned coaches.
TCDD director-general Suleyman Karaman rejected any suggestion of negligence, saying investigators were focused on the track condition. The Kütahya provincial governor ruled out sabotage. Prosecutors opened a formal inquiry into the accident.
The crash renewed longstanding concerns about Türkiye's aging rail network. In July 2004, 37 people died when a newly opened express train derailed in the northwest; eight more were killed in a head-on collision in the same region a month later. Türkiye's worst rail disaster remains a 1957 collision near Istanbul that killed 95 people and left 150 injured.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in January 2008, in its own words.