UN experts demand probe into Belarus deaths in custody

FRANKFURT: A train derailment in a wooded area of southwestern Germany that killed three people on Sunday may have been caused by an overflowing sewer, local police and prosecutors said Monday.

“It is believed that heavy rain in the area of the accident caused a sewage shaft to overflow,” Ulm police and Ravensburg prosecutors said in a joint statement.

“The water triggered a landslide on the embankment next to the tracks, which in turn caused the derailment,” they added.

About 100 passengers were aboard the train when the accident occurred at around 6:10 p.m. (1610 GMT) near the town of Riedlingen in Baden-Wuerttemberg state.

Severe storms swept through the region at the time of the accident, according to weather services.

Three people died in the accident, police and prosecutors said, including the train’s driver and a member of staff onboard.

At least 41 people were injured, some of them severely, they added.

Traffic is still suspended on the affected railway line and cleanup work will begin tomorrow, the statement said.

The investigation is still ongoing and there is no indication of any foul play or interference with the line, authorities said.

ISTANBUL: The death toll from wildfires outside the city of Bursa in northwest Turkiye rose to four late Sunday after two volunteer firefighters died.

The pair died in hospital after they were pulled from a water tanker that rolled while heading to a forest fire, news agency IHA reported. Another worker died earlier at the scene of the accident and a firefighter died Sunday after suffering a heart attack.

Their deaths raised Turkiye’s wildfire fatalities to 17 since late June, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed Wednesday in a fire in Eskisehir, western Turkiye.

Huge fires around Bursa, Turkiye’s fourth-largest city, broke out over the weekend, leading to more than 3,500 people fleeing their homes. On Monday morning, fog-like smoke from ongoing fires and smoldering foliage hung over the city.

Unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds have been fueling the wildfires, with Turkiye and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean experiencing record-breaking heatwaves.

The fires around Bursa were among hundreds to have hit Turkiye over the past month. While firefighting teams have contained the damage to a limited number of homes, vast tracts of forest have been turned to ash.

The water tanker crew comprised volunteers from nearby Bolu province heading to the village of Aglasan, northeast of Bursa, to combat a blaze when the vehicle fell into a ditch while negotiating a rough forest track, IHA reported.

Turkiye battled at least 44 separate fires Sunday, Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said late Sunday. He identified two fires in Bursa province, as well as blazes in Karabuk, northwest Turkiye, and Kahramanmaras in the south, as the most serious.

The government declared disaster areas in two western provinces, Izmir and Bilecik. Prosecutions have been launched against 97 people in 33 of Turkiye’s 81 provinces in relation to the fires, Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said.

A crowd of people gathered Sunday evening outside a police station in the village of Harmancik, 57 kilometers (35 miles) south of Bursa, after learning a suspected arsonist was detained there. The angry crowd demanded for the suspect to be handed over to them. The crowd dispersed after police assured them a thorough investigation would be undertaken.