Spain: train crased at least 35 killed and over 100 injured

By Rida

In an unfortunate incident at  least 35 people have been killed  and over 100 injured wafter a train derailed outside the northern Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela.

According to eyeswitness Train carriages lay on their sides with smoke billowing from the wreckage.

The head of Spain’s Galicia region also confrimed that killing of 35 people in the train derailment, although it was too soon to say what had caused the accident. The train which was carrying 240 passengers, when the accident happened, had caught fire after the crash.

“It was going so quickly … It seems that on a curve the train started to twist, and the wagons piled up one on top of the other,” passenger Ricardo Montesco told Cadena Ser radio station.

“A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the wagons to get out and we realised the train was burning … I was in the second wagon and there was fire … I saw corpses,” he added.

Another witness told the station they had heard an explosion before seeing the derailed train.

The Spanish government’s main working hypothesis concerning the derailment is that it was an accident, a government spokeswoman said.

Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy was due to visit the site of the derailment, on the outskirts of the city of Santiago de Compostela on Thursday morning, she said.

“Rajoy is in an emergency meeting with the deputy prime minister, the interior minister and the public works minister,” she said. “He will visit the site tomorrow morning.”

Santiago de Compostela, the birthplace of Rajoy, is best known as the destination of an ancient Catholic pilgrimage route.