Three soldiers were among the four people killed when a train and an armored military personnel carrier collided in southern Finland on Thursday morning, police said.

Three of the four victims were soldiers in the armored carrier, while the fourth was a passenger on the train.

Eleven others were wounded in the collision. Four of them, whose condition is serious, have been rushed to hospital in the capital, media reports said.

The accident took place near the town of Tammisaari, some 100 km west of Helsinki, at a level crossing where a railway line crosses the road.

The passenger train was commuting between Karjaa and port town Hanko when the crash happened. Train services between the two towns were temporarily halted with buses running instead.

The military vehicle was a Finnish-made carrier commonly used for transporting soldiers. There is a major military base at Dragsvik near Tammisaari.

Finland witnessed the first snow of autumn Thursday morning, which caused traffic problems.

President Sauli Niinistö said in a statement that the conscripts had died "in the service of the fatherland". Finnish parliament honored the fatalities with a moment of silence.

The full investigation into the exact causes of the accident will take 6 to 12 months. Currently the police suspects the conscript who was driving the vehicle had not been careful enough.

Media reports said the killed soldiers were sitting on the roof of the vehicle when the accident occurred. Those sitting inside were not injured.

Veli-Pekka Nurmi, the director of the national accident investigation center, said the collision was a fairly typical accident in Finland. "It was only the dedath of young soldiers that created this major attention", he said on national television.

Defense Minister Jussi Niinistö said the vehicle was in good condition and the roof pellet where some of the soldiers were sitting was equipped with safety belts. "But not even a tank would endure when a train at 100 km per hour hits it."

The Finnish military introduced compulsory safety belts in military vehicles in 2010, two decades after the measure became compulsory in civilian cars.

A national debate was aroused also concerning the rail road crossings and railroad safety, as there were no security barriers or electronic alert systems at the level crossing.

Minister of Transport Anne Berner said there are 2,778 level crossings all over Finland, and more than 2,100 of them have no security alert systems or barriers. The crossing where Thursday's accident took place is on the list of 200 most dangerous crossings.

Berner noted that there were 30 level crossing accidents in Finland last year alone. She believed this accident will speed up the safety improvement.