UFTON NERVET, England (AFP) - Investigators combed the tangled wreckage of an express train in southern England, a day after it slammed into a car at a level crossing, killing at seven people and injuring more than 100.
An off-duty police officer discovered the lone car stopped on a rural crossing west of Reading Saturday evening, unmoving even as safety barriers came down around it, and within moments it was hit by a First Great Western train speeding from London to Plymouth, southwest England.
Authorities refused to comment on whether it was a suicide turned collective tragedy, which killed the driver but also sent 70 people to the hospital late on Saturday.
One half of the car, which was sliced in two by the impact of the train, lay crumpled next to the crossing like a mangled tin can, its paint, windows and any identifying markers totally obliterated.
The remains of the train carriages were catapulted hundreds of yards (metres) up the line, and were flipped on their sides or leaned at a 45-degree angle, jackknifed across the tracks.
It was the worst accident on Britain`s privatised railways since May 2002 when seven people were killed when a passenger train derailed at Potters Bar, north of London.
And it comes after the release of a government report identifying level crossings as the greatest source of "catastrophic risk" for Britain`s railways.
The death toll to seven late Sunday when a man who was seriously hurt in the accident died from his injuries.
"We had a patient who was critical," a spokeswoman for the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, west of London, said.
"He has sadly passed away a couple of hours ago," she said.
Four survivors of 11 remaining in hospital on Sunday were reported to be in serious but stable condition. About half of the 300 passengers on the crowded train suffered minor injuries.
British Transport Police deputy chief constable Andy Trotter said two bodies were still on-site, in a suggestion that they were still trapped in the rubble, while two others had been removed.
He said the off-duty officer arrived too late to stop the accident.
"A Thames Valley (police) officer off-duty saw the car go on to the level crossing, saw the barriers fall, saw the car remain on the crossing and saw the train hit the car", he told journalists.
Later, Trotter said the officer had discovered the car, a sedan, when it was already on the tracks and "was obviously concerned about what was happening.
"Realising there was a potential disaster he ran to the emergency phone to call the signal box but before he got a response, the train came through."
Trotter said investigators were still examining the site.
The dead included the driver of the train, which was hurtling through the countryside at 160 kilometres (100 miles) an hour, the man in the car, who police have not publicly identified, and five train passengers.
"It`s horrible," the Anglican bishop of Reading, Stephen Cottrell, told AFP after visiting the wreckage site. "Your heart goes out to those who are caught up in this."
Queen Elizabeth II, in a message to Transport Minister Alastair Darling, said she was "shocked and saddened" to learn of the crash, and offered condolences to the families of the victims.
Darling conveyed the government`s sympathies and pledged that the inquiry would be carried out "thoroughly".
One survivor, Jonathon Stace, 21, said passengers used their mobile phones as torches to light their way out of the wreckage.
"When it happened, it was pitch-black. We couldn`t see anything, the lights went out and you could just make silhouettes out of people... It was quite clever, everyone managed to use their phone as torches," he said from the Berkshire hospital where he was being treated for lacerations.
At least 100 police and paramedics kept the crash site cordoned off, while emergency lights flashed through the night and through the rainy day at the rural area near Reading.
Cranes were being set up to start dismantling the wreckage on Monday. British rail authorities said travel could be suspended for up to 10 days.
The crash is the latest in a string of rail accidents in Britain in recent years.
Britain`s all-time worst train crash was in May 1915 when a wooden troop train and a passenger train collided at Gretna Green between England and Scotland, killing 227 people.
Bob Crow, general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, called after Saturday`s crash for all level crossings on high-speed rail lines to be removed.
A government report on rail safety this year concluded that level crossings "contribute the greatest potential for catastrophic risk on the railways" and that "misuse by members of the public" of them accounted for many accidents.
There are 8,000 level crossings in Britain, and 17 people were killed on them in the year-long period covered in the report.
11/07/2004 - 21:34 GMT - AFP