At least nine people have been killed and more than 20 seriously injured after a crowded passenger train crashed near the German city of Cologne.

Police said the death toll had risen from seven known to have died earlier but did not expect the count to increase by much more.

"We cannot rule out more deaths but we do not think there will be many more," said police spokesman Winrich Granitzka.

Cranes were taken to the scene on Sunday morning as rescue workers prepared to start lifting the wreckage.

The overnight train was travelling between the Dutch city of Amsterdam and Basle in Switzerland, when the accident happened shortly after midnight local time (2300 GMT).

Two carriages crashed down an embankment and another was crushed against a steel post. The line remains blocked in both directions.

The engine of the train ploughed into a house by the side of the track, but no-one inside was hurt. The train driver also survived the accident.

"I was already sleeping and then a big crash woke me up," said a woman who lives about 100 metres (300 feet) from the accident site, at the small town of Bruehl.

The head of German rail company Deutsche Bahn, Hartmut Mehdorn, who has inspected the crash site on Sunday morning, speculated that the train might have been going too fast.

"Just looking at it, it is possible that the passenger train was moving faster than the 40km/h (25mph) limit," he said.

Heavy equipment

Several hundred rescue workers struggled through the night to break through the mangled wreckage and search the debris.

Reports say many young people were on board the train, including British, Dutch and Japanese nationals.

A group of 50 Dutch skiers came out the accident unscathed and continued their journey by bus, a police spokesman said.

Police found the seventh body buried under wreckage several hours after the accident.

They said 30 rescue vehicles were at the scene, and four helicopters had been used to transport the injured to hospitals throughout the area.

Repair work

The cause of the crash and subsequent derailment has not yet been established.

But a police spokesman said it happened as the overnight train was diverted to another platform because of building work on the tracks just outside Bruehl.

The nine-car train had crossed a series of points to avoid the track work.

German railways spokesman Manfred Ziegerath said it became derailed as it returned to the main line.

It is understood the train involved was not one of German Railways' high-speed express trains, like the one involved in the 1988 Eschede accident.

That crash was the worst in post-war Germany, killing 101 people when the train left the tracks and smashed into a bridge 35 miles north of Hanover.

Train disasters

In August last year, seven people were seriously injured when two underground trains collided in the centre of Cologne.

Thirty-one people died just outside Paddington station in London last October, when an express train collided with a local train.

And in India nearly 300 people were killed when two trains collided in August last year.

On 4 January this year, 19 people lost their lives when an express train collided with a local service near Hamar, Norway.