A high-speed train collision in southern Spain kills 39 and injures 123, with officials calling the derailment on a straight track ‘extremely strange’
ADAMUZ: A high-speed train derailed and was hit by another in southern Spain, killing 39 people and injuring more than 120.
Authorities described the country’s worst train crash in over a decade as “extremely strange”.
The crash happened on Sunday evening when a train operated by rail company Iryo travelling from Malaga to Madrid derailed near Adamuz.
It crossed onto the other track where it crashed into an oncoming train, which also derailed.
The interior ministry said at least 39 people died, raising the toll from 21 given by police late on Sunday.
Another 123 people were injured, including five very seriously and 24 seriously, a ministry spokeswoman added.
Transport Minister Oscar Puente told reporters the disaster took place on a completely renovated, straight part of the track.
The first train to derail was “practically new”, making the accident “extremely strange”, he added.
Rail experts “are very surprised by this accident because it is very strange and very difficult to explain at this stage,” the minister said.
Rail operator Iryo said around 300 people were on board its Malaga-Madrid service.
Renfe, the operator of the second train, has not said how many passengers it was carrying.
The hundreds of passengers left in the wreckage hampered the frantic work of emergency services.
“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.
“We have even had to remove a dead person to be able to reach someone alive. It is hard, tricky work,” he added.
Some of the carriages had tumbled down an embankment of four metres.
A passenger on the second train, bound for the city of Huelva, described the moment of impact.
She told Spanish public television the train, “with a jolt, came to a complete stop, and everything went dark”.
Survivor Lucas Meriako, who was travelling on the first train that derailed, told La Sexta television that “this looks like a horror movie”.
High-speed services between Madrid and the Andalusian cities of Cordoba, Seville, Malaga and Huelva were suspended on Monday.
“Today is a night of deep pain for our country owing to the tragic rail accident in Adamuz,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on X.
The royal palace said Spain’s King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia were following the news “with great concern”.
French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen were among the world leaders offering condolences.
