At least 17 Taiwan tourists injured in train-bus crash in Switzerland

Seventeen tourists from Taiwan were injured when a German high-speed train collided with a tour bus in the Swiss lakeside town of Interlaken, Swiss police and a Taiwanese official said on Saturday.

Police in the nearby Swiss capital of Bern said in a statement the accident happened of Friday night at a railway crossing involving a bus registered in neighbouring Austria. Police were investigating the cause of the accident.

Bern police spokesman Nicolas Kessler said none of the injured had sustained life-threatening injuries and most had already left a hospital. A spokeswoman for the Taiwan mission in Geneva said Taiwanese diplomats were working to get details and reaching out to the tourists to provide translation and other consular services.

Taiwan's CNA news agency reported that 12 people sustained minor injuries and another five were in critical condition. Donatella Del Vecchio, a spokeswoman for the Swiss railway operator, said no one inside the train was injured and train services resumed after a brief interruption.