German rescue workers are continuing the search for bodies in the wreckage of an express train which crashed near Cologne on Sunday.

Police said on Monday they did not expect to find any more survivors.

Officials have lowered the death toll from nine to eight, but say the number could still rise.

A police spokesman said the confusion over the figure arose from the mangled state of the carriages. "The passengers came from five continents, so it is extremely complicated," he said.

More than 100 people were injured when the train derailed and ploughed into a house.

A further 41 passengers remained unaccounted for on Monday, but investigators believed that they had left the scene of the accident in a state of shock.

'Speeding'

Officials said the train, en route from the Dutch city of Amsterdam to Basel in Switzerland, was travelling at 120 kph (75 mph) as it crossed points diverting it past building work on the track just outside Bruehl station. The speed limit for the diversion was 40 kph (25 mph).

Lead police investigator Winrich Granitzka said: "From the looks of it, it's rather unlikely that the train was observing the speed limit at the accident site."

After leaving the railtrack, the engine hurtled down an embankment with several of the front cars and hit a house.

None of the home's occupants was injured.

Rescue workers using heavy equipment and search dogs broke open mangled blue coaches at the debris-strewn site through the night.

Medics freed several passengers only by amputating limbs.

Mr Granitzka said: "We cannot rule out more deaths but we do not think there will be many more."

Holiday-makers

The train driver was not injured, but under shock, police said. Investigators said they had recovered the train's speed recorder.

Many of the travellers, who included Dutch, British, Japanese, Italians and Americans, were on their way to ski holidays in the Alps, officials said.

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

It is understood the train involved was not one of German Railways' high-speed express trains, like the one involved in the 1998 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.

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