Officials in Spain said the death toll from a high-speed train collision in the south of the country, currently at 39, could rise further, with rescuers at work on the mangled wreckage.
It is already Spain’s deadliest train accident since 2013, when 80 people died after a train veered off a curved section of track outside the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela.
The crash happened late Sunday when a train operated by rail company Iryo travelling from Malaga to Madrid derailed near Adamuz in Andalucia.
It crossed onto the other track, where it crashed into an oncoming train, which also derailed.
The interior ministry said 39 people died.
Over 120 people were injured, with 48, including five children, still in hospital, regional emergency services said. Of those, 12 were in intensive care.
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Heavy machinery was being deployed to lift the most severely damaged train carriages, the head of the regional government of Andalucia, Juan Manuel Moreno told reporters.
“Unfortunately, it is quite possible that additional victims will be found beneath the twisted wreckage. The goal is to identify the victims as quickly as possible,” he added.
The cause of the derailment was not yet known.
Unlike the 2013 accident, the derailment occurred on a straight section of track, and the trains were travelling within the speed limit, officials said.
‘Extremely strange’
Transport Minister Oscar Puente said the first train to derail was “practically new” and the section of the track where the disaster happened had been recently renovated, making the accident “extremely strange”.
Train operator Iryo said the locomotive was built in 2022 and last inspected just three days before the accident. It said it “veered onto the adjacent track for still unknown reasons”.
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The company said around 300 people were on board its service from the Andalusian city of Malaga to the capital, Madrid.
Renfe, the operator of the second train travelling to the southern city of Huelva, said it was carrying 184 passengers.
Human error has “been practically ruled out,” Renfe president Alvaro Fernandez Heredia told Spanish public radio RNE.
“It must be related to Iryo’s rolling stock or an infrastructure issue,” he added.
PM heads to scene
The stretch of track where the accident happened had a speed limit of 250 kilometres per hour (155 miles per hour), Heredia said.
One train was travelling at 205 kilometres per hour, and the other 210 kilometres per hour, he added.
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Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was to visit the site of the disaster later on Monday, his office said.
“Today is a night of deep pain for our country owing to the tragic rail accident in Adamuz,” he wrote on X on Sunday night, adding: “No words can alleviate such great suffering.”
Spain has Europe’s largest high-speed rail network, with more than 3,000 kilometres of dedicated tracks connecting major cities including Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Valencia and Malaga.
Emergency services said they struggled to free the hundreds of passengers trapped in the wreckage.
“The problem is that the carriages are twisted, so the metal is twisted with the people inside,” Francisco Carmona, head of firefighters in Cordoba, told public broadcaster RTVE.
A passenger on the second train who gave only her first name, Montse, told Spanish public television the train, jolted, “came to a complete stop and everything went dark”.
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She described being thrown around in the carriage at the back end of the train and seeing luggage tumble onto other passengers.
“The attendant behind me hit her head and was bleeding. There were children crying,” she added.
“Luckily, I was in the last car. I feel like I was given a second chance at life.”
Police were focused at the moment “on identifying the victims and carrying out forensic work,” a Civil Guard spokeswoman, Rosa Reina, told reporters in the village of Adamuz.
French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen were among world leaders offering condolences.
