A train crashed into a school van at a level-crossing in the Belgian \u200btown of Buggenhout on Tuesday, killing four people including \u200btwo special needs pupils, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The driver and an adult \u2060accompanying the pupils also died while two other students were \u200bbadly injured.<\/p>\n
Images in Belgian media showed a white minivan lying on \u200bits side near the track, its front badly crumpled.<\/p>\n
Transport minister Jean-Luc Crucke said security camera footage showed the crossing’s safety barriers had come down.<\/p>\n
“What could \u200bhave been a beautiful spring morning suddenly turned into a \u200bpitch-black day,” East Flanders provincial deputy Kurt Moens told news outlet VRT NWS.<\/p>\n
European \u200cCommission \u2060President Ursula von der Leyen said on X: “Today, Europe grieves with Belgium.”<\/p>\n
The accident occurred early on Tuesday near Buggenhout station, about 23km north of Brussels.<\/p>\n
The van was carrying seven \u200bpupils with special \u200bneeds to \u2060their school, and a chaperone, Belgian federal police spokesperson An Berger said.<\/p>\n
\n RTL quoted a spokesperson for \u200bthe state railway infrastructure operator, Infrabel, saying that the \u200btrain \u2060driver had applied the emergency brakes but that “the shock was extremely violent.”<\/p>\n
Belgium, where a dense railway network criss-crosses towns and villages, has \u2060a history \u200bof accidents at level-crossings.<\/p>\n
Since 2021, 36 \u200bpeople have died in 168 such accidents, according to Infrabel’s website.<\/p>\n
\n \u00a0– Reuters\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A train crashed into a school van at a level-crossing in the Belgian \u200btown of Buggenhout on Tuesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,1608,11371,1165],"class_list":["post-17438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgium","tag-international","tag-report","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116640810732341352","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}