At least 39 people were killed and more than 150 injured in a rail disaster in southern Spain. The collision of two overcrowded high-speed trains was one of the deadliest accidents in the country in more than a decade.
The incident occurred on Sunday evening near Cordoba. A train travelling from Malaga to Madrid derailed and, after spinning, crashed into another train coming in the opposite direction on an adjacent track.
At around 7:40 p.m., several carriages of the Madrid-bound train left the tracks. The impact was so forceful that some carriages of the second train were thrown off the embankment.
According to the state broadcaster RTVE, by Monday morning the number of those injured had reached at least 152.
Video footage from the scene, located about 360 kilometres south of Madrid, showed carriages lying on their sides as rescuers climbed over them, pulling out stunned passengers.
It was Spain’s deadliest rail disaster since 2013, when a high-speed train derailed on a curve in Galicia, near Santiago de Compostela, killing 80 people.
Spain’s transport minister, Oscar Puente, said that the investigation into the causes of Sunday’s crash could take at least a month.
Salvador Jimenez, an RTVE journalist who was travelling on one of the trains, described the moment of impact as follows: “At one point, it felt like an earthquake.”
The trains were packed with passengers returning after the weekend. About 300 people were travelling on the Madrid-bound service operated by the Italian company Iryo. The second train, run by the state operator Renfe and heading from Madrid to Huelva, was carrying 184 passengers.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, cancelled his official engagements scheduled for Monday in response to the disaster.
Spain has traditionally highlighted the high standard of its high-speed rail network, which is regarded as one of the most extensive in the European Union.