Several cars on an Amtrak train derailed in northern Missouri on Monday after hitting a dump truck at a crossing, with reports of injuries among its approximately 243 passengers, the U.S. national passenger railroad service said in a statement.
The train hit the vehicle at a public crossing in Mendon, Missouri, at 1:42 p.m. as it was traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago, Amtrak said.
Three patients were being taken to a University of Missouri Health Care hospital in Columbia, Missouri, about 90 miles away, a hospital spokesman said.
The federal National Transportation Safety Board said it was gathering information on the incident.
Eight air ambulances responded and authorities were treating it as a mass casualty incident, a Washington Post reporter wrote on Twitter.
"We ask Missourians to join us in praying for all those impacted," Missouri Governor Mike Parson said on Twitter.
A passenger on the train, Robert Nightingale, told CNN that all the cars "were knocked over, except the main engine."
He said he had been dozing off in his car when the train derailed.
"I could feel the tracks go back and forth, back and forth, and then it started to go, to tumble on my side of the road," he said.
Nightingale said he and others were at a local school.
"There were ambulances all over, they were bringing stretchers to the train, and now there are stretchers here at the school," he said.
An Amtrak passenger train derailed in north central Montana in September. Three people were killed.
(Reporting by Eric Beech, Chris Gallagher, Timothy Ahmann, Rami Ayyub, Ismail Shakil; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Howard Goller)
