Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has vowed to find out why two high-speed trains collided in southern Spain, killing at least 40 people, as rescuers continue to search for the wreckage.
After visiting the crash site, Sanchez also announced three days of national mourning for the victims.
More than 120 people were injured when carriages of a Madrid-bound train derailed and crossed the opposite tracks, colliding with an oncoming train in Adamuz on Sunday evening.
The crash was the worst the country had seen in more than a decade.
Rail network operator Adif said the collision occurred at 19:45 local time (18:45 GMT) on Sunday, about an hour after one of the trains left Málaga heading north to Madrid, when it derailed on a straight track near the city of Córdoba.
The force of the crash pushed the carriages of the second train onto an embankment, according to Transport Minister Óscar Puente. He added that most of the dead and injured were in the front carriages of the second train, which was traveling south from Madrid to Huelva.
Rescue teams said the twisting wreckage of the trains made it difficult to rescue people trapped inside the carriages.
Sanchez visited the crash site with senior officials on Monday afternoon.
“This is a day of sadness for all of Spain, for our whole country,” he told reporters.
“We will go to the truth, we will find the answer, and when the answer is known about the origin and cause of this tragedy, because it is impossible, with full transparency and full explanation, we will announce it to the public.
Puente said an investigation could take at least a month, describing the incident as “very strange”.
Reuters
EPABut the Reuters news agency cited an unnamed source briefed on the initial investigations as saying that experts had found a faulty joint in the tracks, which caused a gap between sections of the track to widen as trains traveled over it. They added that joint identification of the cause of the accident is key.
Spain’s El País newspaper said it was unclear whether the fault was a cause or a result of the crash.
Four hundred passengers and staff were on board the two trains, railway authorities said. Emergency services treated 122 people, with 41, including children, still in hospital. Of these, 12 are in intensive care.
Puente said the death toll was “not final”. Officials are working to identify the dead.
The type of train involved in the crash was a Freccia 1000, which can reach a top speed of 400 km/h (250 mph), a spokesman for Italian railway company Ferrovie dello Stato told Reuters.
Salvador Jimenez, an RTVE journalist who was on one of the trains, said the impact felt like an “earthquake”.
“I was in the first carriage. There was a moment when it felt like an earthquake and the train actually derailed,” said Jimenez.
Footage from the scene appears to show some train carriages falling on their sides. Rescue workers can be seen climbing into the train to pull people out of the train’s broken doors and windows.
A passenger heading to Madrid, José, told public broadcaster Canal Sur: “There are people and screaming, calling for doctors.”
All high-speed services between Madrid and the southern cities of Malaga, Cordoba, Sevilla and Huelva were suspended until Friday.
King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia said they were following news of the disaster “with great concern” and offered their “heartfelt condolences”.
The regional emergency agency of Andalusia is urging anyone who survived the crash to contact their families or post on social media that they are alive.
The Spanish Red Cross deployed emergency support services to the scene, while also offering counseling to families nearby.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez from the Red Cross told RNE radio: “Families are going through a situation of great anxiety because of the lack of information. These are scary moments.”
In 2013, Spain suffered its worst high-speed train derailment in Galicia, northwest Spain, which left 80 people dead and 140 others injured.
Spain’s high-speed rail network is the second largest in the world, after China, connecting more than 50 cities across the country. Adif data shows that Spain’s railways are more than 4,000km long (2,485 miles).