Lisbon [Portugal], September 5: Portuguese authorities were investigating on Thursday what caused a Lisbon funicular railway popular with tourists to hurtle down a hill, killing at least 16 people and injuring 22 more when it crashed into a building on Wednesday.
The Prosecutor General's office said coroners had so far identified the bodies of five Portuguese, two South Koreans and one Swiss national, without disclosing further details of those killed.
A U.S. citizen was killed in the crash, the State Department said in a statement. According Portugal's judicial police chief, Luis Neves, there was a "high degree of certainty" that there were also two Canadians, one Ukrainian and one German among the dead, although the identities could not yet be officially confirmed.
The mangled wreckage of a yellow tram-like carriage, which carries people up and down a steep hillside in the Portuguese capital, lay where it had left the track and hit a building on Wednesday, just metres from its twin at the bottom of the steep 265-metre slope.
The traction cable linking them had snapped.
Lisbon resident Abel Esteves, 75, and his wife and grandson were among 40 passengers in the lower car who saw the carriage plunge toward them before derailing at the last second.
"I told my wife: 'We're all going to die here'," he said. "It picked up a brutal speed, took a slight turn and hit the building with a loud bang."
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Cooperation
