A rail crash has killed at least 39 people and injured more than 150 in southern Spain after two packed high-speed trains collided in one of the worst accidents in the country in more than a decade. The incident on Sunday evening near Córdoba occurred when a train travelling from Málaga to Madrid derailed and smashed sideways into an oncoming train on a parallel track.
Several carriages of the Madrid-bound train derailed at around 7.40pm and the force of their impact on the second train pushed some of its carriages down into an embankment.
At least 152 people had been injured, said state broadcaster RTVE on Monday morning. Video from the scene, 360km south of Madrid, showed some carriages lying on their sides with rescuers scaling them to pull out dazed passengers.
The death toll was the worst in a Spanish rail crash since 2013, when 80 people died after a high-speed train derailed on a curve near Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. Óscar Puente, Spain’s transport minister, said an investigation into the cause of the Sunday crash could take at least a month.
Salvador Jimenez, a journalist at RTVE who was on one of the trains, described the impact, saying: “There was a moment when it felt like an earthquake.” The trains were packed with people returning home from weekend trips, with the Madrid-bound train, run by the Italian company Iryo, carrying about 300 passengers.
There were 184 people on the second train, run by state rail operator Renfe, which was travelling from Madrid to Huelva. Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez cancelled his Monday schedule in light of the accident. Spain takes pride in the quality of its high-speed rail network, which is one of the most extensive in the EU.
