German investigators said Monday that a train derailment over the weekend that killed three people and injured 41 others was the result of a mudslide caused by heavy rains.
“The water caused a landslide on the embankment near the tracks, which in turn probably caused the derailment,” the police in Ulm, where the train was heading on Sunday evening when it went off the rails, said in a statement.
The train driver, another member of the crew and a passenger were killed in the crash near Riedlingen, a small town roughly 30 miles north of Lake Constance in southern Germany. The police said that many of the injured were passengers.
Videos of the scene that appeared on television networks showed several of the train’s cars lying on their sides, bunched together next to the tracks. The rear car was still standing upright after the accident, but had also come off the tracks.
The tracks were visibly bent several yards behind where the train came to a stop, the news footage showed. A large amount of mud was visible on several parts of the track.
Rescue workers worked into the night trying to care for the wounded and transport them to surrounding hospitals. Half a dozen emergency helicopters helped in the evacuation, news reports said.
The accident was one of the most deadly rail crashes in Germany since 2022, when a regional train derailed near Garmisch-Partenkirchen in southern Bavaria, killing five. In that case faulty tracks were deemed to be the cause.
Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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