ANKARA, July 22 (AFP) - Fourteen people were killed and many others injured Thursday in northwestern Turkey when a train travelling from Istanbul to Ankara derailed, the NTV news channel reported.
At least 20 people were injured in the accident in the province of Sakarya, the channel said.
A local official confirmed that several people were killed or injured, but did not give details.
"We do not have figures yet but we have learned that there are dead and injured," the deputy governor of the province of Sakarya, Orhan Alimoglu, told TRT television.
Four carriages of the train overturned, the deputy head of the public railway authority, Ali Kemal Ergulec, told NTV.
He said the cause of the accident was not immediately known.
The train was one of the commuters which had recently started accelerated voyages between Ankara and Istanbul, amid criticism that the infrastructure was not suitable for such a project.
"I want to emphasize that the speed of the train in this region was the same as those of normal trains," Ergulec said.
Ambulances and civil defense teams went to the site of the accident, near the town of Pamukova, NTV said.