'Freak' train crash kills 48 reindeer in Sweden
A speeding train killed 48 reindeers in an instant in Sweden on Saturday.
The incident occurred near the village of Kaitum in Sweden's Laponia region.
According to thelocal.se, near-misses by railways are common as the herds migrate during winter in search of food.
In this case, the herd wandered onto snow-covered tracks and were startled by the train, which they tried to outrun.
A local rancher who witnessed the collision, Ingmar Blind, told the Independent: "It wasn't pretty to see."
The regional transport official in charge of maintenance, Fredrik Rosendahl, told AFP: "If you follow a reindeer in a car, for instance, it will tend to run in front of the car, it won't go to one side.
"So just imagine what happens with a train that needs more than a kilometre to come to a stop."
Back in 2012, a similar incident in Sweden saw 200 reindeer killed by a train at once.
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