Man thrown from train and dozens injured after it hits tree branches on tracks in France

France: At least 10 people have been seriously wounded including a man who was thrown out from a train after a high-speed regional train traveling at 140km/h between Nimes and Montpellier hit a tree that fell onto its tracks in southern France on Wednesday.

According to reports from rescue workers, the train hit a tree that had been uprooted by a hailstorm.
More than 10 people were seriously wounded and were in need of urgent medical attention while 50 other passengers sustained minor injuries.

The national rail operator SNCF in a statement said; 

“At Lunel at around 3.45pm, a TER (regional train) going at 140km/h hit a tree which had fallen on to the track after extremely violent storms in the region,”. 

“Firefighters and police are at the scene where access is very difficult.”

The number of passengers on the train had not been released at the time of the report but according to local reports about 200 people were on board the train.

According to reports by The Sun, the man who was thrown from the train was rushed to hospital.
The Express reported that one of the passengers who was shocked by the accident tweeted;

“The train is totally exploded. We took a projectile which totally blew the car. A guy was ejected, surely serious wounded.”

The Twitter user also shared an image of the damage with the message;

“This is the train and what happened, we can see not much but it is huge and has a huge hole.”

Another passenger, Arthur Bechilly, who was travelling on the TER service, told Midi Libre newspaper that the weather “changed quite suddenly” and “hail began to fall”.

“We felt a jerk that came from the front of the train. Not much, but very quickly we knew that the situation was serious,” he said.