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LISBON: Portuguese police said on Friday that three Britons were among the 16 killed in a funicular railway crash in Lisbon, as the mangled wreckage was removed for further analysis to establish the cause of the accident.
Portugal is reeling from a tragedy that Prime Minister Luis Montenegro described as one of the greatest in its recent history and that threatens to dent confidence in the tourism industry, which in Lisbon depends on vintage attractions such as the 140-year-old Gloria railway.
After coroners identified more bodies, police updated the list of fatalities that now includes five Portuguese citizens, three Britons, two South Koreans, two Canadians, and one from each of France, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States.
They released no names or other details. More than 20 people were injured.
Police said that a German citizen who had been presumed dead was in fact alive in a hospital. Local media had said that a German father had died and a mother was seriously hurt while their 3-year-old child suffered minor injuries.
The German foreign ministry said at least three German nationals were in hospital.
A preliminary report on the accident will take six weeks to complete, according to Portuguese authorities. While they do not rule out any possible cause, police sources told the Publico daily there were no signs of foul play.
The crashed car’s twin at the bottom of the steep 265-meter slope was also removed and will be studied by experts.
The two cars, each capable of carrying around 40 people, alternately climb the slope and descend, one helping to pull the other up, as electric motors drive the cable linking them.
That traction cable snapped, apparently at or near the connection to the bottom of the upper car, according to two experts consulted by Reuters who pored over the video footage.
Seemingly unable to check its descent, the carriage entered a sharp bend in the street too fast, plowing into the cobblestone pavement and crashing into a building.
The municipal transport company Carris has said “all maintenance protocols have been carried out,” including monthly and weekly maintenance and daily inspections, the latest just hours before the incident with no faults detected.
“We cannot assume that the problem was with the cable,” Carris CEO Pedro Bogas said on Thursday.
The line connects Lisbon’s downtown area near the Restauradores Square with the Bairro Alto and transports around 3 million people a year.

LONDON: The UK’s deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, resigned Friday after an independent inquiry found that she did not meet the ethical standards required for government ministers over a recent home purchase.
Rayner, who admitted on Wednesday that she did not pay enough tax on her purchase of an apartment in Hove, on England’s south coast, earlier this summer, said the report found that she acted in good faith, but that, crucially, she should have sought more specific tax advice.
“I take full responsibility for this error,” she said in her resignation letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “I would like to take this opportunity to repeat that it was never my intention to do anything other than pay the right amount.”
In response, Starmer voiced his sadness but said Rayner had made the right decision.
“I have nothing but admiration for you and huge respect for your achievements in politics,” Starmer wrote. The handwritten letter signed off “with very best wishes and with real sadness.”
Rayner referred herself to the independent adviser on ministerial standards, Laurie Magnus, on Wednesday, who delivered his report to Starmer on Friday.
Though Magnus concluded that Rayner had “acted with integrity and with a dedicated and exemplary commitment to public service,” he said that “with deep regret” she had breached the ministers’ code of conduct. She said in her resignation letter that she also had to “consider the significant toll that the ongoing pressure of the media is taking on my family.”
In the UK, levies are charged on property purchases, with higher charges due on more expensive homes and secondary residences. Reports have suggested that Rayner saved 40,000 pounds by not paying the appropriate levy, known as a stamp duty, on her 800,000-pound ($1 million) purchase.
Rayner, 45, had sought to explain that her “complex living arrangements” related to her divorce in 2023 and the fact that her son has “lifelong disabilities” underlay her failure to pay the appropriate tax.
Rayner’s journey from teenage single mother to trade union official to lawmaker and deputy prime minister is a rarity in British politics.
Her no-nonsense attitude and plain-speaking manner have been a distinct — and politically useful — contrast to the more pragmatic, lawyerly Starmer and she will be hard to replace. She had the ability to connect with sections of the public that Starmer had struggled with since he became prime minister.
Rayner, who held the housing brief in the Labour government, had often railed against those who deliberately underpay tax, particularly those in the preceding Conservative administration, which Labour replaced in July 2024.
Her previous comments had opened her up to charges of hypocrisy, particularly from current Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who said Rayner’s position had been “untenable for days.”
“The truth is simple, she dodged tax,” she said in a video posted on social media. “She lied about it.”
Rayner is a hugely popular member of the Labour Party and was widely tipped to be a potential successor to Starmer. In addition to resigning as deputy prime minister, Rayner quit as deputy leader of the party, meaning that members will have to select someone new.
Starmer is undertaking a shuffle of his Cabinet following Rayner’s resignation. He will be hoping that the political agenda can now move on after days of speculation surrounding Rayner’s future.
His Labour government has seen its support fall sharply since it won last year’s election following a string of mis-steps, particularly on welfare reform, and ongoing concerns about the scale of immigration into the UK, both legal and illegal.