Most of those killed in Lisbon streetcar derailment were foreigners, police say

LISBON, Portugal (AP) – Police in Portugal said Friday that 11 of the 16 people killed when a streetcar derailed were foreigners, as an initial investigative report examining what caused the popular Lisbon tourist attraction to crash was expected to be released.

The dead included five Portuguese nationals, three British citizens, two Canadians, two South Koreans, one American, one French, one Swiss and one Ukrainian, police said in a statement.

A German man also thought to have died in Wednesday’s crash was found to be in a Lisbon hospital, police said. It didn’t provide an explanation for the error.

The list of nationalities was published following forensic identification.

The distinctive yellow-and-white Elevador da Gloria, which is classified as a national monument, was packed with locals and international tourists Wednesday evening when it came off its rails. Sixteen people were killed and 21 others were injured.

Multiple agencies are investigating what Prime Minister Luis Montenegro has described as “one of the biggest tragedies of our recent past.”

The government’s Office for Air and Rail Accident Investigations said that it has concluded its analysis of the wreckage and would issue a preliminary technical report Friday. It wasn’t clear how revealing the report would be.

Chief police investigator Nelson Oliveira said that a preliminary police report, which has a broader scope, is expected within 45 days.

The streetcar’s wreckage was removed from the scene overnight and placed in police custody.

A woman who was a French-Canadian dual citizen is among the dead, the French Foreign Ministry said Friday.

The transport workers’ trade union SITRA said the streetcar’s brakeman, André Marques, was among the dead. A national Portuguese charitable organization, Santa Casa da Misericórdia, whose main Lisbon headquarters are at the top of the hill where the streetcar runs, said four of its staff were killed.

Spaniards, Israelis, Portuguese, Brazilians, Italians and French people were injured, the executive director of Portugal’s National Health Service, Álvaro Santos, said.

“This tragedy … goes beyond our borders,” Montenegro said in a televised address from his official residence. Lisbon hosted around 8.5 million tourists last year, and long lines of people typically form for the streetcar’s short and picturesque trip a few hundred meters up and down a city street. Thursday was a national day of mourning.

Hundreds of people attended a somber Mass Thursday evening at Lisbon’s majestic Church of Saint Dominic. Montenegro, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas were among the attendees, some dressed in black, in the candlelit sanctuary.

The electric streetcar, also known as a funicular, is harnessed by steel cables and can carry more than 40 people. Officials declined to comment on whether a faulty brake or a snapped cable may have prompted the descending streetcar to careen into a building where the steep downtown road bends.

“The city needs answers,” the mayor said, adding that talk of possible causes is “mere speculation.”

Aside from investigations by police, public prosecutors and government transport experts, the company that operates Lisbon’s streetcars and buses, Carris, said it has opened its own investigation.

The streetcar, which has been in service since 1914, underwent a scheduled full maintenance program last year and the company conducted a 30-minute visual inspection of it every day, Carris CEO Pedro de Brito Bogas said Thursday.

The streetcar was last inspected nine hours before the derailment, he said during a news conference, but he didn’t detail the visual inspection or specify when questioned whether all the cables were tested.

Lisbon’s City Council halted operations of three other funicular streetcars while immediate inspections were carried out.

Felicity Ferriter, a 70-year-old British tourist, said she was unpacking her suitcase at a nearby hotel when she heard “a horrendous crash.”

The couple had seen the streetcar when they arrived and intended to ride on it the next day.

“It was to be one of the highlights of our holiday,” she said, adding: “It could have been us.”

Francesca di Bello, a 23-year-old Italian tourist on a family vacation, had been on the Elevador da Gloria just hours before the derailment.

They walked by the crash site on Thursday, expressing shock at the wreckage. Asked if she would ride a funicular again in Portugal or elsewhere, Di Bello was emphatic: “Definitely not.”

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Hernán Muñoz in Lisbon, and Angela Charlton in Paris, contributed to this report.