Four people dead & others injured after head-on collision of two coal freight trains on private railway line in Siberia (VIDEO)

Four people in Russia have died and four others have been injured after two freight trains collided head-to-head in the country’s Amur region, derailing both. Investigators are now trying to determine the cause of the accident.

The crash happened near the Verkhny Ulak station, on a track used by a coal mining company. Trains use the line to bring coal from Yakutia’s Elga coal mine, the largest in Russia and one of the biggest in the world.

According to the latest update, a total of eight people were working on the two freight trains at the time of the collision. Four of them died, and four were injured. Three of the casualties were taken by helicopter to a hospital in the town of Zeya, in the Amur Region, with the fourth refusing hospitalization.

According to A-Property, the owner of the Elga coal mine, the crash may have happened after one of the train drivers suffered from a heart attack.

Reports also suggested that the operation to save the injured was hampered by intense fires currently raging through Siberian forests, with smoke not allowing rescuers to reach the remote site. Emergency responders were forced to land their helicopter some distance away from the incident, in the village of Gorny, where they switched to cars.

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