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At least 21 people were killed after a high-speed magnetic train collided with another coach on Friday in northern Germany, local reports said.

Fifteen bodies had so far been recovered from the wreckage, police said, adding that 10 were seriously injured, Deutsche Presse-Agentur said in a report.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is on her way to the accident site to check the situation and German President Horst Koehler has extended his condolences to the casualties and their families.

German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee had postponed a trip to China, according to Tiefensee's spokesman.

About 150 rescuers were trying to get to trapped passengers, but the rescue work was not easy because the test track is built on concrete stilts four meters above ground level, Deutsche Presse-Agentura said in a report.

Some 25 people were on the driverless train, which was traveling at 200 km per hour on a stretch of test track when it slammed into a service coach on which there were at least five passengers, said the report.

On local news N-TV, the wreckage of the train was seen hanging half-way off the track and firefighters were using ladders to reach the injured.

The cause for the accident was still under investigation.

Another local TV station, N 24, reported that the passengers aboard the train were relatives of the workers who had built the test track.

Magnetic trains, propelled by a linear induction motor, use powerful magnets to allow it to float just above the tracks and glide along without friction. Trains of this kind can reach 450 km per hour.

In China, a fire broke out in an electrical storage compartment aboard Shanghai's magnetic-levitation train as it was headed toward the city's international airport on Aug. 11, generating large amounts of smoke but causing no deaths or injuries.

The Shanghai system is the world's only commercially operating maglev train.

(Xinhua News Agency September 23, 2006)