{"id":604849,"date":"2026-05-26T13:56:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/604849\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T13:56:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:56:18","slug":"four-killed-as-school-minibus-collides-with-train-in-belgium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/604849\/","title":{"rendered":"Four killed as school minibus collides with train in Belgium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;What heartbreaking news,&#8221; Flemish education minister Zuhal Demir posted on social media. &#8220;My thoughts are with all the victims, their families and everyone closely involved.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Today, Europe grieves with Belgium,&#8221; said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The train was slowing down at the time of the collision on its approach to Buggenhout station, Thomas Baeken, a spokesman for Belgian rail network Infrabel, told public broadcaster VRT.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added that first indications from CCTV footage confirmed that the lights on the level crossing were red and the barrier was down. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;How this accident could have happened, we don&#8217;t know. That is for the police and the public prosecutor&#8217;s office to investigate,&#8221; Baeken said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Another Flemish minister, Annick De Ridder, told Belgian TV it was terrible news and too early to talk of responsibility at this stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The mayor of Buggenhout, Geert Hermans, concluded a press conference by calling for a minute of silence to honour the victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;What heartbreaking news,&#8221; Flemish education minister Zuhal Demir posted on social media. &#8220;My thoughts are with all the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-604849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}