Man Clings To Austrian High-Speed Train, Survives
The man, late Saturday, grabbed onto the outside of the train at St Poelten, west of Vienna, railways spokesman Herbert Hofer told AFP, and was later taken onboard after the train performed an emergency stop.
"It is irresponsible, this kind of thing usually ends up with someone dying," he said.
"And you're not just putting yourself in danger, if you end up under the train, there are rescuers, there's police, fire service that come," he added.
The railjet train was on its way from Zurich in Switzerland to the Austrian capital and left Sankt Poelten on time but arrived in Vienna with a seven-minute delay, Hofer said.
Citing a passenger onboard, Austrian tabloid Heute said the man jumped into the space between two carriages after the train began to set off from a planned stop in Sankt Poelten.
The man had taken advantage of being at a station to smoke a cigarette on the platform, Heute said.
The man soon began to bang on windows to attract attention, Heute said, resulting in the train's conductor activating the emergency brake before the train crew took the man aboard.
"The conductor had a very big go at him," the passenger told Heute.
The man is a 24-year-old Algerian and was led away by police after the train arrived in Vienna's Meidling station, Heute reported.
Hofer said he could not comment on the man's background ahead of further investigations.
In January, a 40-year-old Hungarian man survived clinging to a German high-speed train for 20 miles, likewise after it set off before he had finished his cigarette.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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Foreign governments were standing by to help resolve disputes if necessary. Intelligence chiefs in both countries reported back to superiors in their capitals: This is someone we can work with. Smuggled lists In time, those early exchanges birthed a whole new infrastructure. In a leafy district of Kyiv, near hipster cafes and beauty salons, a nondescript three-story building became HUR's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners-of-War. On the top floor, Usov and his HUR subordinates meet regularly in a conference room with the families of POWs who come dressed in T-shirts bearing logos of their son or husband's brigade and often harangue the officials over a lack of results. In the basement, analysts scour Russian websites and social media feeds for clues about POWs' location and condition. They have compiled a vast database that includes 200 data points about each individual including height, eye color and Russian responses to questions from the Red Cross. Ukrainians released in swaps have smuggled out lists with the names of comrades in a specific cell. Photos of those lists are compiled in evidence to convince the Russians a particular person is in their captivity. 'To get people back, we have to know who we're fighting for,' said Viktoriia Petruk, a 34-year-old who leads the analytics department and spoke for the first time to the media about her work. Viktoriia Petruk leads a group of HUR analysts who scour websites and social media to feed a database of POWs held by the Russians. The basement analysts have identified almost 200 detention facilities across Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine where Ukrainian combatants are held often in dire conditions. Ukraine has five dedicated POW camps, most of them former prisons where the captive Russians earn money sewing, chopping wood, or producing furniture for sale at Ukrainian stores. Kyiv is eager to show Western partners it has moral high ground by treating its prisoners better than Russia. Logistics have often been fraught. In January 2024, a Russian military plane carrying 65 Ukrainian POWs to a prisoner swap was shot down near the border, a move Moscow blamed on Kyiv, which hasn't taken responsibility for it. During a lull in swaps, and facing political protests from prisoners' relatives, HUR concocted several long-shot schemes to speed things up: offering convicted pro-Russian collaborators and even the bones of long-buried Russian spies for exchange. Russia didn't take the bait. But when peace talks stalled in Istanbul this Spring, both countries consented to another round, this time bigger than ever before. On a sunny recent morning, Usov again headed north from Kyiv to greet a fresh cohort of hundreds of exchanged Ukrainian soldiers. Injured men limped and staggered up to the general to thank him, then asked a question: when would be the next round of prisoner trades that might bring their brothers-in-arms home? Write to Matthew Luxmoore at Drew Hinshaw at and Joe Parkinson at The Secret Channel Russia and Ukraine Use to Trade Prisoners of War The Secret Channel Russia and Ukraine Use to Trade Prisoners of War
