More than 5,000 mourners gathered here Saturday for a service to commemorate the many local people who died last week in Austria's funicular train fire, state TV reported.
Forty-four people from the province of Upper Austria died when fire swept through a train headed up to the Kitzsteinhorn glacier, Austria's worst post-war disaster, which altogether left 155 people dead.
The town of Wels, where the service was was held, suffered particularly when 32 local people lost their lives aboard the doomed Kaprun train in a trip organized by local authorities for employees, friends and relatives.
"The victims from Kaprun have left behind a great gap that we cannot fill. What they brought to us as friends, as colleagues, their sympathy and understanding, has not disappeared with them," said the mayor of Wels, Peter Koits, at the ecumenical service.
He also recalled that this was not the first time local people of Wels had lost their lives during a group trip. Eleven people from the town died in 1983 when fire swept though a hotel in Istanbul, when they were on a local council trip.
Six children from Upper Austria became orphans when both parents died in this latest tragedy, and four others lost one of their parents.
The service brings to an end the official mourning of the province, which was called on Monday when it became clear how many had been lost in the November 11 catastrophe.
A total of 155 people died in the blaze. The victims included 92 Austrians, 37 Germans, 10 Japanese, eight US nationals, four Slovenians, two Dutch nationals, one Briton and one Czech citizen.
On Friday, Austrian and German leaders, as well as the ambassadors of Japan, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands, gathered in Salzburg, capital of the province where the disaster occurred, to commemorate the dead -- WELS (AFP)
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