TEN people died when a regional passenger train collided with a goods train in eastern Germany.
Up to 20 other people were seriously injured in the accident which happened at Hordorf near Oschersleben, in Saxony-Anhalt, firemen and police said. They gave differing numbers.
About 20 others suffered minor injuries, according to firemen. A total of 40 people were evacuated to hospitals, a police spokesman said.
More than 150 firemen, police and rescue workers were at the scene, where the passenger train lay derailed and on its side.
The regional train was the HarzElbeExpress (HEX) travelling between Magdeburg and Halberstadt.
The cause of the accident was not immediately known, said Joerg Puchmueller, the northeast region spokesman for the Veolia group which runs the HEX line.
There is a single line running between Magdeburg and Halberstadt and maintenance work was scheduled for the night, the HEX website said.
Traffic was interrupted on the line and bus shuttles were set up, a HEX staff member said contacted by telephone.
The Veolia spokesman said the train had a capacity of about 100 but could not say how many were on board at the time of the collision.
The goods train also belonged to a private company.
Germany has been hit by several deadly train accidents in the past few years.
In 2006, 23 people were killed and 10 injured when an experimental magnetic suspension Transrapid train crashed at 170km/h on a test track at Lathen in northwest Germany in a collision with an inspection vehicle.
Three years earlier six people died and 25 were injured in June 2003 in a frontal collision between two regional trains near Schrozberg in the southwest of the country.
But the worst postwar train disaster occurred on June 3, 1998 when an InterCity Express (ICE) travelling from Munich in the south to Hamburg in the north hit a bridge and derailed, killing 101 and injuring 88 at Eschede in northern Germany.
Last August 15 people were injured when an ICE high-speed train travelling from Frankfurt to Paris hit a garbage truck near Lambrecht in southwest Germany
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