Twenty-one people were injured Thursday when two passenger trains collided head-on just outside a station north of Tel Aviv, DPA reported.
The injuries were "very minor" because the trains were travelling at low speed due to their proximity to the station of the coastal town of Netanya, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
The accident was being investigated, he said.
Eyewitnesses said the double-decker trains hit each other near a point where the railway tracks come together a few hundred metres south of the station.
The locomotive of one train hit the second wagon of the other, as the first wagon disconnected, said the witnesses, adding one of the trains was badly damaged.
"We had just left Netanya station when we heard a loud boom," one eyewitness on the southbound train told reporters.
He speculated that one of the drivers had failed to obey a traffic light directing him to the right track, adding the only reason a disaster had been averted was "sheer luck," because the train had not yet accelerated.
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