A deadly collision of two high-speed trains in southern Spain on Sunday after one of them derailed and jumped onto another track has led to at least 21 people getting killed, and dozens others injured, said the country’s transport minister.
The tail end of an evening train, running between Malaga and Madrid with some 300 passengers, went off the rails near Cordoba at 7.45 pm local time and slammed into a train with some 200 passengers coming from the opposite direction from Madrid to Huelva, another southern Spanish city, according to rail operator ADIF.
Spain’s Transport Minister, Oscar Puente, said the exact cause of the derailment was unknown, but said it’s “a truly strange” incident because it happened on a flat stretch of track that had been renovated in May, which means the derailed train should have faced no impediment in its track.
Puente updated the death toll after midnight to 21 victims, when rescues had removed all the survivors. But, there could be more victims still to be confirmed, the minister said.
Andalusia’s regional health chief, Antonio Sanz, said that 73 injured passengers have been taken to six different hospitals. The situation at the crash site “is very serious,” he said, adding, “We have a very difficult night ahead.”
Sharing more information on the trains, Puente said the train that derailed was relatively new, being less than four years old, and belonged to a private company, Iryo. The second train that bore the brunt of impact belonged to Spain’s public train company, Renfe.
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He said the back part of the first train derailed and crashed into the head of the other train, which suffered the worst damage, knocking its first two carriages off the track and down a four-metre slope.
Iryo issued a statement, saying it “deeply lamented what has happened” and that it was working with authorities to manage the situation.
An inquiry into the crash’s causes, said the minister, could take at least a month.
Francisco Carmona, the firefighter chief of Cordoba, told a Spanish national radio channel that one of the trains was badly mangled, with at least four wagons off the rails. Since the incident occurred in the early evening hours, hundreds of survivors had to be rescued in the darkness.
The regional Civil Protection chief, Maria Belen Moya Rojas, told Canal Sur the accident happened in an area that is hard to reach.
One of the survivors of the accident, Salvador Jimenez, a journalist for Spanish broadcaster RTVE, told the network by phone that “there was a moment when it felt like an earthquake and the train had indeed derailed”.
He said passengers used emergency hammers to break the windows, and that some had walked away without serious injuries. Videos from people on site show some people crawling out of windows at some points to escape the wreckage with carriages leaning at an angle.
Local people were seen taking blankets and water to the scene to help the victims, Rojas said.
Spain’s military emergency relief units joined the deployment of other rescue units, while the Red Cross also provided support to healthcare officials.
High-speed trains, running on an extensive national network, are a popular way to travel in Spain. ADIF said train services between Madrid and cities in Andalusia would not run Monday.
Meanwhile, European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a post on X that she was following “the terrible news” from Cordoba.
“Tonight you are in my thoughts,” she wrote in Spanish.
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