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ACCIDENT

Denmark to destroy train involved in fatal Great Belt Bridge crash

A train which crashed on the Great Belt Bridge on January 2nd this year is to be scrapped. Eight people lost their lives in the tragedy.

Denmark to destroy train involved in fatal Great Belt Bridge crash
The train wreckage on the Great Belt Bridge on January 2nd. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen / Ritzau Scanpix

The train, which was severely damaged but not irreparable, will be broken up and destroyed, Avisen Danmark reports.

“We have decided that when the Danish Maritime Investigation Board (DMIB) has finalized its report (of the accident), the train will be completely destroyed. It is not going to run again,” Per Schrøder, operations director with national rail company DSB, told Avisen Danmark.

After the January crash, which was the worst rail accident in Denmark for 30 years, the wreckage of the train was taken to a workshop in Aarhus.

Following police and DMIB investigations, it was handed over to DSB’s insurers.

“The train could possibly be repaired, but it was severely damaged,” Schrøder said.

“There are feelings involved… out of respect for the dead, their loved ones and staff, nothing will be reused,” he added, noting that a final decision would, however, be taken by the insurance company.

Similarly to conventions in air travel, the number of the DSB service was changed after its involvement in the tragedy.

The 05:19 departure from Aarhus was previously designated ICL 210, but was relisted as ICL 212 after the accident.

“It was completely natural for me to change the number of the service. We did this out of consideration for passengers and staff who don’t want to make associations with the catastrophe,” Schrøder said.

Initial results from the DMIB investigation point to high winds and insufficient attachment mechanisms as primary causes of the fatal accident, in which the passenger train collided with empty carriages from an oncoming freight train on the box-girder section of the Great Belt Fixed Link.

The final report from DMIB is expected to be published around the end of this year.

READ ALSO: Badly-attached container caused fatal accident on Great Belt Bridge: initial report

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ACCIDENT

Cable car survivor must be returned to family in Italy, Israel court rules

An Israeli court ruled Monday that a boy whose parents died in an Italian cable car crash be returned to family in Italy, after his grandfather was accused of illegally bringing him to Israel.

Aya Biran , a paternal aunt of Eitan Biran who was the sole survivor of a deadly cable car crash in Italy, arrives at Tel Aviv’s Justice Court on October 10, 2021
Aya Biran , a paternal aunt of Eitan Biran who was the sole survivor of a deadly cable car crash in Italy, arrives at Tel Aviv’s Justice Court on October 10, 2021. Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP

The battle for custody of Eitan Biran, the sole survivor of the May accident that killed 14 people, has captured headlines since his maternal grandfather, Shmulik Peleg, brought him to Israel on a private jet last month.

The child lost his parents, younger brother and great-grandparents in the May 23 accident near the top of the Mottarone mountain in the northwestern Piedmont region, where the family was out on a Sunday excursion to the scenic spot served by the cable car.

The cable car’s pull cable snapped just before it reached destination. It then flew backwards, dislodging itself from a second, supporting cable, and crashed to the ground.

Investigations later revealed that emergency brakes that could have stopped the car on its supporting cable, avoiding the tragedy, had been deliberately deactivated to avoid delays following a technical malfunction.

Three individuals responsible for the cable car’s management were subsequently arrested.

The wreckage of a cable car that crashed on the slopes of the Mottarone peak above Stresa, Piedmont on May 23, 2021, killing 14.

The wreckage of a cable car that crashed on the slopes of the Mottarone peak above Stresa, Piedmont on May 23, 2021, killing 14. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP.

Peleg has insisted that he drove Eitan from Italy to Switzerland before jetting him back to Israel – instead of returning him paternal aunt Aya Biran, who lives in northern Italy – because Eitan’s late parents wanted him to be raised in the Jewish state.

But Peleg has become the subject kidnapping probe by Italian prosecutors and Israeli police questioned him over those allegations last month.

A statement Monday from the Tel Aviv court where Aya Biran had filed a complaint said judges “did not accept the grandfather’s claim that the aunt has no custody rights”.

It recognised an Italian judgement that established Biran as a legitimate guardian and said Peleg had “unlawfully” removed the boy from his aunt’s care.

The court “ordered the return of the minor to his usual place of residence in Italy”.

The court also found that “a connection” between the surviving members of the Italy- and Israel-based relatives was in Eitan’s “best interests”.

Peleg was also ordered to pay Biran’s legal fees, amounting to 70,000 shekels ($22,000).

READ ALSO:

Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather of Eitan Biran, hugs a relative outside the Justice Court in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on October 8, 2021.

Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather of Eitan Biran, hugs a relative outside the Justice Court in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on October 8, 2021. Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP

The case has stirred emotions in Israel, and throngs of journalists had surrounded the Tel Aviv court for hearings last month, with some pro-Peleg protesters insisting it was wrong to send a Jewish child out of Israel.

Before judges ordered the sides to stop talking to the media, Peleg told Israel’s Channel 12 in September that his grandson was “in the place where he is supposed to be, in his home, in Israel.”

Eitan and his parents, Amit Biran and Tal Peleg, had been living in Italy, where Amit Biran was studying medicine, together with their other child, Tom.

Eitan suffered severe chest and abdominal injuries and spent a week in intensive care after the May accident that occurred when a cable snapped on the aerial tram bringing weekend visitors to the top of the Piedmont region’s Mottarone mountain.

The accident was one of Italy’s worst in over two decades.   

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