AT least 100 people were feared dead and 200 seriously injured after a high-speed passenger train apparently crashed into a car which had ploughed off an overpass in northern Germany yesterday.

It is the country's worst rail disaster since the Second World War,

The train was travelling at 125mph, and the force of the impact sent 13 carriages crumpling into the concrete base of the overpass, causing it to collapse on top of part of the wreckage.

Officials expected the death toll to rise as teams of rescue workers, including British soldiers stationed nearby, continued to battle late last night to reach victims buried in the debris.

Two parties of schoolchildren were feared among the missing.

The accident happened at 11am as the Hamburg-bound train with up to 350 passengers on board approached the station at Eschede, 35 miles north of Hanover.

British painter and decorator Andrew Davidson, working in Germany, witnessed the crash which happened in bright weather.

He said police had stopped him minutes beforehand on the road which led on to the overpass. ''There had been an accident with a car coming off the bridge. The car was on its sides on the tracks and we were waiting for ambulances to come to the scene,'' he said.

''Then out of nowhere came the express train and everyone just closed their eyes in disbelief.''

Later, police caused confusion by saying a vehicle had been crushed beneath the wreckage but added it was unclear where the car was at the time of the accident.

Police spokesman Joachim Lindenberg told German television the car belonged to a rail employee who was working along the tracks.

Passenger Wolf-Rdiger Schlib-ener, who was in the second carriage, said minutes before the accident he had heard ''a tremendous rattling and shaking'' in the train, as if something was being dragged underneath. A conductor pulled him from the wreckage through a window.

An investigator told a news conference the driver ''felt a tug which automatically released the brakes, and then he looked out the window and noticed he no longer had a train behind him''. A rail official said the train split in two. ''The first half went under the bridge and the second half rammed the bridge which then collapsed.''

Views of the wreckage showed the front engine of the train had cleared the bridge by at least 500 yards, while the third carriage and subsequent cars derailed and jack-knifed into each other.

Rescuers described the scene as ''sheer carnage and destruction'' with the force of the pile-up pushing carriages high into the air.

Survivors were taken to hospitals throughout the Lower Saxony region. The Red Cross chartered six buses.

German Chancellor Helmut Kohl cut short a visit to Italy to return home last night.

The Foreign Office said it was not aware of any British casualties, but warned that it would probably take days to identify all the fatalities.

Mr Tony Blair sent a message of condolence ''to the people and government of Germany''.

As well as the British troops dispatched to the scene, specialist regiments, the 1st Armoured Field Ambulance Regiment and the 32nd Engineer Regiment, both based nearby were put on standby. A Army spokesman said he was not aware of any British military personnel travelling on the train.

The accident was the worst on Germany's premier high-speed ICE line, inaugurated in 1991. In 1945, 102 people died in a train crash in Assling, south of Munich, when an American troop transport train crashed into a train carrying German war prisoners.

The ICE trains connect all major cities at speeds of up to 175 mph, carrying up to 65,000 passengers daily.

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