LISBON: Portugal held a day of national mourning on Thursday after one of Lisbon’s famous funicular trains violently derailed and killed 16 people, including foreigners, and leaving five seriously injured.
Two South Koreans, a Swiss national and five Portuguese are among the dead identified from the Lisbon funicular disaster, a Portuguese prosecution spokesman said.
At least 11 foreigners were among the injured — two Germans, two Spaniards, a Frenchwoman, an Italian, a Swiss national, a Canadian, a South Korean, a Moroccan and a Cape Verdean, emergency services said.
The spokesman said experts were still working to identify eight more bodies from the accident. Many tourists were on the funicular that derailed and smashed into a building.
The yellow Gloria funicular, a beloved symbol of the Portuguese capital, veered off a steep stretch of tracks on Wednesday evening in one of Lisbon’s most popular tourist spots, crashing into a building.
A woman interviewed by television channel SIC said the train, which can hold about 40 people, struck the building “with brutal force and collapsed like a cardboard box”.
Images after the accident showed another funicular stopped on the tracks a few metres away on the tracks as tourists and onlookers watched, stunned.
The dead included two South Koreans and a Swiss national; 11 foreigners were among the injured
Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas called the incident a tragedy the likes of which “our city has never seen” before.
Fifteen people — eight men and seven women — were killed instantly and one person died later in hospital, emergency services said.
Officials had said that 17 people had been killed, but they later corrected the toll and clarified that one person had died in hospital after previously reporting two.
Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2025