SIOFOK (Hungary), May 8: At least 34 people died on Thursday when a passenger train ploughed into a German tourist coach in central Hungary, slicing it in half and dragging it down the track, police said.

A spokesman said the coach was hit by the train as it crossed a railway line near Siofok, on the shores of Lake Balaton, Hungary’s leading tourist area.

A senior official said the coach had been carrying 38 passengers.

Twenty-eight people were killed in the crash, two died later in hospital, and nine were injured, he said. The driver was among the dead.

“The train, which was going full speed, practically slit the bus in two and flattened one half, pushing it around 200 metres down the track,” he said.

The coach had tried to cross the railway line even though hazard lights had warned of an oncoming train.

“The scene is just horrible,” he said.

The bodies of some of the dead, pulled out from under the train, were laid out beside the tracks while emergency services brought in wooden coffins.

Torn bus seats, wiring and debris littered the tracks.

Thirty ambulances and four emergency service helicopters ferried the injured to nearby hospitals.

Germany’s foreign ministry said the passengers were believed to have come from the northern German states of Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, but had no further details.

The German coach travel association said the passengers had booked their trip with travel operator Maxim Reisen in Cloppenburg, northern Germany.

Emergency service officials said at the scene they thought the Germans were staying at a hotel in Siofok, around 100kms southwest of the capital, and a popular destination for tourists from Hungary’s ex-communist neighbours.

Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy expressed his shock.

“This is maybe the most horrific bus accident in Hungary’s history,” he said, adding he had contacted German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder about the crash.

Last July, 19 Poles were killed and 32 injured in the same part of Hungary when a bus taking them on a pilgrimage to Bosnia ploughed into a roundabout and overturned.

In Sept 1992, 16 German holidaymakers died in a bus crash in Hungary.

The prime minister said his government would now look into whether more safety barriers should be installed at rail crossings. —Reuters