Italy gas train derails and explodes, killing 14

The accident happened when an axle on one car of the 14-car train buckled and caused the derailment, officials said.

Firefighters battled to contain blazes started by the explosion, which spread to nearby buildings and set cars alight. The area around the tracks was blackened and rescuers struggled to pull survivors from collapsed homes.

GATX Rail Austria, a unit of the U.S.-based GATX, which owns the rail cars -- each one consisting of a gas tank attached to a wagon -- said it did not know the cause of the explosion and was still collecting information.

"So far we do not see any connection between the cause of the accident and our wagons," it said in a statement.

It was Italy's most deadly rail accident since 17 people were killed in January 2005, when a passenger train collided with a freight train near the northern city of Bologna.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart, Gavin Jones and Silvia Ognibene; Writing by Phil Stewart)