Spain train crash kills 68, injures more than 100

A high-speed train collision south of Madrid killed 68 people and injured scores more on Wednesday, with the toll likely to rise, authorities said, in one of Europe's…

A high-speed train collision south of Madrid killed 68 people and injured scores more on Wednesday, with the toll likely to rise, authorities said, in one of Europe's deadliest such disasters this century. The second such accident to strike Spain this year will raise fresh questions about the country's rail safety, with the transport minister speaking of an "error" and "inexplicable circumstances" that led to the collision.

Reporters on the scene in the central region of Castilla-La Mancha saw one train embedded into another and some carriages lying on their side in tangles of metal debris at the bottom of an embankment. Dozens of emergency services vehicles were racing to and from the site during a frantic search for survivors, while several black vans arrived from a funeral parlour.

Castilla-La Mancha's leader Emiliano Garcia-Page told reporters at the scene that 68 people had died, raising an earlier toll of 64 and having already warned of more victims being found. A spokeswoman from the Castilla-La Mancha regional government said that more than 100 people had been injured. Of them, 58 had been taken to hospital, with 15 in a critical condition.

State railway operator Renfe confirmed in a statement that the main high-speed line from Madrid to southern Spain had been suspended after one of its services suffered an accident with a train from private Spanish company Iryo. Pablo Mejia, 42, with blood staining his grey jumper, said he had miraculously survived after changing his seat, as he awaited a transfer to the southern city of Seville. He recounted "a very strong hit.

It lasted a long time until it stopped, lots of people on the floor, on top of each other, seats ripped out, suitcases, a lot of chaos." A visibly shaken Manuel Ortiz who lives in the village of Urda close to the site of the accident, around 130 kilometres south of Madrid, said he had been transporting survivors all morning in his car.