Spain's transport minister blames 'inexplicable' order for train crash that killed at least 68, after brushing off resignation calls
Mangled wreckage on its side after two high-speed trains collided in Toledo province, Spain, killing at least 39 people and leaving survivors scrambling clear while passengers remained trapped.Smoke rises from derailed carriages between Los Yébenes and Urda after the crash, which emergency crews feared could surpass the Adamuz disaster, where 46 people died in January.
Spain's transport minister has attributed the country's deadliest rail disaster in a decade to an "inexplicable" instruction given to a train driver after an automatic safety system failed, as questions mount over what led to the crash near Toledo. He disclosed that the decades-old safety system broke down at 8:30am on Wednesday, halting six trains across a 63km stretch of track, before controllers took the fatal decision to allow one of them to proceed — straight into a stationary Iryo train. The death toll stands at at least 68, with more than 100 injured, and officials fear further victims may still be trapped in the wreckage.
Witnesses described passengers being "hurled into the air" as three carriages derailed and one car was shredded into debris-strewn wreckage down a gravel slope.
The crash is Spain's second fatal high-speed rail disaster in nine months, following a January collision near Adamuz that killed 46 people.
Train drivers had been due to strike on Thursday over long-running safety concerns, with their union demanding "real and definitive technical solutions" to reliability problems.
