Spain Train Derailment: 39 Dead, Scores Injured
- Spanish police said Monday that at least 39 people are confirmed dead in a high-speed train collision the previous night in the south of the country, as efforts...
- when the tail end of a train carrying some 300 passengers on the route from Malaga to the capital, Madrid, went off the rails.
- The head of the second train,which was carrying nearly 200 passengers,took the brunt of the impact,Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said.
Spanish police said Monday that at least 39 people are confirmed dead in a high-speed train collision the previous night in the south of the country, as efforts to recover the bodies continue with authorities expecting the death toll to rise.
The crash occurred Sunday at 7:45 p.m. when the tail end of a train carrying some 300 passengers on the route from Malaga to the capital, Madrid, went off the rails. it slammed into an incoming train traveling from Madrid to Huelva, another southern Spanish city, according to rail operator Adif.
The head of the second train,which was carrying nearly 200 passengers,took the brunt of the impact,Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said. That collision knocked its first two carriages off the track and sent them plummeting down a 13-foot slope. Puente said it appeared the largest number of the deaths occurred in those carriages.
Susana Vera / REUTERS
Andalusia regional president Juanma Moreno said Monday morning that emergency services were still searching what he described as a mass of twisted metal where the smashed carriages had derailed.
“It is likely (that there will be more dead people found) when you look at the mass of metal that is there. The firefighters have done a great job, but unfortunately when they get the heavy machinery to lift the carriages it is indeed probable we will find more victims.”
“Here at ground zero, when you look at this mass of twisted iron, you see the violence of the impact.”
Video and photos showed twisted train cars lying on their sides under floodlights. passengers reported climbing out of smashed windows, with some using emergency hammers to break the windows, according to Salvador Jiménez, a journalist for Spanish broadcaster RTVE, who was on board one of the derailed trains.
He told the network by phone Sunday that “there was a moment when it felt like an earthquake and the train had indeed derailed.”
Spanish police said 159 people were injured, of whom five were in critical condition. A further 24 were in serious condition, authorities said.
The collision took pla