Two dead after train hits truck (5)

(ANSA) - Turin, May 24 - Two people are dead and 23 are injured after a train smashed into a lorry that was on the tracks overnight at a level crossing at Caluso, in the province of Turin.
    The 61-year-old driver of the train and the 64-year-old Romanian driver of a van that was escorting the truck, which was carrying an oversized load, were killed.
    The train driver, Roberto Madau, was due to retire in a few months.
    Among the injured is the train's conductor, a woman, who is fighting for her life.
    The 39-year-old Lithuanian driver of the truck, Darius Zujis, has been put under investigation for allegedly causing a rail disaster.
    "It wasn't me who decided the route to get to Foglizzo," Zujis said in his defence.
    "I don't decide anything. The team guides me in my headphones because visibility is very much reduced with then load".
    Highway agency ANAS said the lorry had not respected ANAS "general conditions of use" in its authorisation.
    "There was a roar and then the disaster," eye witnesses said.
    Prosecutors are looking into communications between the Trenitalia rail company and the operators of the oversized load lorry.
    The load, two huge funnels, was travelling from the Czech Republic with Lithuanian plates to historic construction firn Bitux in Foglizzo neat Turin.