Death on French railway halts Eurostar London-Paris traffic

Train traffic between London and Paris was halted Tuesday after a person was crushed to death by a Eurostar train in northern France in what officials say was an apparent suicide.

Eurostar said it suspended train service after the death Tuesday, leaving passengers stranded on both sides of the Channel. A spokesman for French national railway SNCF said French trains that use the line were rerouted elsewhere.

Police were investigating the death, which occurred on the high-speed line near the town of Fresnoy in the Pas-de-Calais region, the SNCF spokesman said.

Smoke rose up from the train's emergency brakes as it screeched to a halt, according to tweets from Eurostar, which operates the cross-Channel passenger service. Emergency services arrived at the scene, while the train was being held in place, Eurostar said.

The SNCF spokesman said the person killed was not a migrant but was "most probably" someone trying to commit suicide. While such attempts are common on French train lines, they rarely affect the line used by the Eurostar. Migrants have been killed in the past trying to sneak into the tunnel beneath the Channel.