Israelis are among those injured in a streetcar derailment in Portugal’s capital on Wednesday, AP reported Thursday.

The crash killed 16 people and injured 21 others, emergency services said. At least half the victims were foreigners.

Investigators are still sifting through the wreckage in downtown Lisbon, trying to determine why the popular tourist attraction derailed during the busy summer season.

Portugal’s attorney-general’s office said eight victims had been identified so far: five Portuguese, two South Koreans and a Swiss person. There was “a high possibility,” based on recovered documents and other evidence, that the victims also include two Canadians, one American, one German and one Ukrainian, according to the head of the national investigative police, Luís Neves. Three of the dead remained to be identified.

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

The nationalities appeared to confirm suspicions that the Elevador da Gloria was packed with tourists as well as locals when it came off its rails during the evening rush hour on Wednesday. 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.

“This tragedy… goes beyond our borders,” Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said at his official residence, calling it “one of the biggest tragedies of our recent past.” Portugal observed a national day of mourning on Thursday.

Montenegro, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas were among the hundreds of people who attended a somber Mass at Lisbon’s imposing Church of Saint Dominic on Thursday evening.

Many of the stricken attendees were dressed in black, some........

© The Times of Israel