BARCELONA, Spain — At least 64 people were killed and 58 injured when two high-speed trains collided in central Spain on Wednesday, sending carriages careering off the tracks, in the second major accident on the same line in less than a year.
“We heard a massive roar, a truly enormous thud that went on for 10 seconds, as if the train were about to derail,” one passenger, Miguel, told Spain’s COPE radio, adding that he was traveling with several colleagues in the rear car of one of the trains.
“Through the right-hand window, we could see a wrecked train — I imagine it must have been the other one,” he added.
Pictures showed several carriages lying on their sides next to the tracks and others twisted at angles, their wheels sheared off. Debris was strewn around the scene of the accident in the countryside in the province of Toledo.
As rescue teams continued to search through the wreckage of the derailed carriages, the Castilla-La Mancha regional government said 64 people had been killed and 58 injured.
Earlier, the region’s President Emiliano García-Page said that at least 80 people were injured. Together the two trains were carrying more than 500 passengers.
Locals rushed to the scene of the accident, which has prompted a major national emergency response and raised questions about the safety and security of Spain’s high-speed rail infrastructure, which had previously been hailed as among the most sophisticated in Europe.
Esther Padilla, spokeswoman for the Castilla La Mancha region, told state broadcaster TVE that the trains were heading in the same direction from Madrid to Seville when one ran into the tail of the other, which had stopped on the line.
She added that some 397 people had been traveling on the state-owned Renfe train and 147 people on the private rail company Iryo train.
