A nine-year-old boy who was seriously injured after being hit by a goods train in Germany's western Ruhr area is in a stable condition following an operation, a police spokesperson told dpa on Friday.
Another boy, aged 10, had died in the incident shortly after 6 pm (1700 GMT) on Thursday in the town of Recklinghausen, in Germany's industrial heartland.
There were no indications of further casualties, the police spokesperson said.
"It is terrible what happened here," said North Rhine-Westphalia Interior Minister Herbert Reul at the site of the accident. "One can only hope that there are many people here to help the parents get over this blow."
Investigators are now looking into how the children accessed the railway premises. More details are expected to emerge during the course of the day.
The fire brigade deployed a drone with thermal imaging cameras to scan the scene during the night. The affected families received pastoral care.
The police have appealed for witnesses to come forward. In particular, they want to know whether more children might have been on the tracks before the accident. "This is also an object of investigation," the spokesperson said.
Initial media reports said that a group of young people had been caught by the train and dragged several hundred metres.
The accident site was near a former goods station, the fire brigade said.
The police completed their initial on-site investigation in the early hours of Friday, after searching for traces around the tracks late into the night. No further site inspections were planned for now, a spokesperson said.
The locomotive of the goods train remained standing on the tracks several hundred metres away. Rail traffic was still closed on the track in the morning, affecting a suburban rail line. A replacement service had been set up, a Deutsche Bahn spokesperson said.
According to the police spokesperson, it remained unclear where exactly the collision had occurred.
The morning road traffic was unaffected and shops were open. Many people hurried across the nearby level crossing in cars, on bicycles or on foot.
During the course of the day, overhead pictures are to be taken of the area in daylight, using either a drone or a helicopter.
