M A I N   N E W S

78 die in Spain train crash
Over 140 hurt Speeding said to be cause Driver held

Santiago De Compostela (Spain), July 25
A Spanish train hurtled off the rails and smashed into a security wall as it rounded a bend at twice the speed limit in north-western Spain killing at least 78 passengers and injuring over 140 others in the nation's deadliest rail disaster since 1944. The police took the driver into custody on Thursday.

The train hit a sharp bend at speed, derailed and caught fire near the pilgrimage centre of Santiago de Compostela in one of Europe's worst rail disasters. The crash was caused by excessive speed, an official source with knowledge of the accident investigation told Reuters.

Dramatic video footage from a security camera outside the northwestern city showed the train, with 247 people on board, hurtling into a concrete wall at the side of the track as carriages jack-knifed and the engine overturned.

One local official described the aftermath of the crash, on the eve of one of Europe's biggest Christian festivals in the ancient city, as like a scene from hell, with bodies strewn next to the tracks. The impact was so huge one carriage flew several metres into the air and landed on the other side of the high concrete barrier.

"We heard a massive noise and we went down the tracks. I helped get a few injured and bodies out of the train. I went into one of the cars but I'd rather not tell you what I saw there," Ricardo Martinez, a 47-year old baker from Santiago de Compostela, told Reuters.

The train driver has been arrested, a spokeswoman for Galicia's Supreme Court told Reuters, without naming him. The train had two drivers and one was in hospital. It was not immediately clear which driver was under investigation.

Newspaper accounts cited witnesses as saying one driver, Francisco Jose Garzon, who had helped rescue victims, shouted into a phone: "I've derailed! What do I do?" The 52-year-old had been a train driver for 30 years, a spokeswoman for Renfe, the state-owned operator, said.

Many newspapers published excerpts from his Facebook account where he was reported to have boasted of driving trains at high speed. The page was taken offline on Thursday and reports could not be verified.

"We're only human! We're only human!" the driver told the station, the paper said, citing sources close to the investigation. "I hope there are no dead, because this will fall on my conscience." — Agencies

Death on tracks

• The train, with 247 people on board, hurtled off the rails and smashed into a security wall as it rounded a bend
• Such was the speed that carriages tumbled off the tracks like dominos, according to eyewitness accounts and video footage
• El Pais newspaper said one of the drivers told the railway station by radio after being trapped in his cabin that the train entered the bend at 190 kmph
• The speed limit on that stretch of twin track was 80 kmph