Children were on board a high-speed train that derailed during a test run in north-eastern France, the French rail company said, as the death toll rose to 11 with five still missing.
“A few children … were among the injured,” an SNCF spokesman said on Sunday. “The investigation should determine the number of people present on the train [and those who] were not authorised to be on it.”
Saturday’s crash near Strasbourg of one of France’s flagship high-speed trains was “a huge shock”, the SNCF chairman, Guillaume Pepy, told a news conference. “So far the accident is inexplicable.”
Pepy told French radio that the inquiry would determine who rode along with the test team and “in what circumstances were they allowed to board this train. SNCF does not approve this practice … a train test is a train test.”
The train ended up partially submerged in a canal in the town of Eckwersheim, near the German border. On Sunday, its silver and black rear locomotive still lay in the canal under a bridge, with the next carriage straddling the bank and the water.
The 11 dead were among 49 technicians and railwaymen tasked with testing the next generation TGV, which was due to go into service next spring.
Twelve people remain in critical condition among the 37 injured, according to Strasbourg’s deputy prosecutor, Alexandre Chevrier. Five people were still reported missing, he said.
Chevrier said sabotage or an attack had not been ruled out, but were considered unlikely causes. A senior official in the Alsace region on Saturday blamed excessive speed for the disaster.
The train was running at about 350km/h (217mph) when it derailed, a source close to the inquiry said. The black box data storage units have been recovered.
While French TGV trains have previously derailed, Saturday’s was the first in which people died. France’s worst train accident in recent years occurred in July 2013 when a commuter train derailed in a Paris suburb, killing seven people and injuring dozens more.
The latest accident happened with France on high alert following the deadly attacks in Paris on Friday. However, there were no signs that the train derailment was anything other than an accident during testing.
In August, a Moroccan man was overpowered by three US citizens after he began firing a Kalashnikov on board a TGV train between Amsterdam and Paris.
The new trains are designed to provide speedy journeys from Paris to eastern France and eventually into Luxembourg. But it was now “reasonable to assume” that the high-speed Paris to Strasbourg line would not be opened next April as planned, the SNCF board member, Jacques Rapoport, said on Sunday.
