BUDAPEST -- Part of an express train headed from eastern Hungary to Budapest derailed Friday, its cars sliding into a station building and burying passengers underneath the rubble. Police said at least 20 people died.


The accident occurred at Szajol, a station near Szolnok about 70 kilometers southeast of the Hungarian capital. The second car of the express train derailed, dragging three other cars with it, and the overturned carriages smashed into the station building, railway officials said.


"There was a tremedous explosion, like the end of the world,'' said a railway employee who witnessed the accident and asked not to be identified. He said in a telephone interview that people remained buried in the wreckage more than four hours after the crash.