A train derailment in alpine southern Germany during a bank holiday getaway left at least four people dead and 16 seriously injured, authorities said. The double-decker train, travelling on a regional service from the picturesque resort town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Munich, derailed at about 12.15pm on Friday on an elevated section of track near the municipality of Burgrain, according to police. Three carriages ended up on their sides in a brook next to the rail tracks. Many of the injured had to be lifted upwards through broken windows, a police spokesperson said. The accident occurred shortly after local schools had closed for the weekend, and many of the passengers on the train were children, authorities said. Germany’s transport minister, Volker Wissing, spoke of a “catastrophe”, the full extent of which he said was yet to be understood. “The pictures that are reaching us at the moment from Garmisch-Partenkirche are dramatic,” said the politician, of the liberal Free Democratic party (FDP). “It was just terrible,” an American soldier who witnessed the accident from a nearby road told Garmisch-Partenkirchener Tagblatt newspaper. “Just terrible, the train suddenly tipped over.” Visiting the site of the accident on Friday afternoon, Bavaria’s interior minister, Joachim Herrmann, said four people had died, 16 had serious injuries and about 140 had escaped with lighter injuries. Herrmann said no more passengers were believed to be trapped in or under the carriages. Fifteen German soldiers who were on the train helped to rescue people from the carriages, he said. It was not clear how many people were on the train at the time of the accident. The line between Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Oberau, north of the accident site, has been closed.