12 killed by Spanish train
A high-speed train passing through the Castelldefels Playa station near Barcelona in Spain hit and killed 12 Spanish teenagers who were crossing the train tracks at the time. At least 14 other people were injured in the accident – three of which were in a critical condition, according to officials on the scene. The deceased, it is believed, were on their way to the San Juan summer festival having just arrived by train themselves. In their hurry to get to their destination, though, they crossed the tracks rather than using the proper pedestrian underpass, which, according to witnesses, was crowded and slow moving. Fernando Ortega, one of the witnesses to the accident, told Spanish media that the platform on which the youngsters had just arrived was ‘very full’, which prompted a large group of people ‘to jump across the tracks and cross to the other side of the station’. “At that moment,” he continued, “a train came from the other direction and ran everyone over.” Another witness claimed the door to the underpass was not open to train passengers: “The door was closed and we could not get through, so we tried to go through the side of the train, and there was no light and nobody alerted us that the train was coming. We were more than 30 people.” The accident is the worst rail disaster in Spain since 2003, when 19 people were killed when two trains collided near the central town of Chinchilla.
A high-speed train passing through the Castelldefels Playa station near Barcelona in Spain hit and killed 12 Spanish teenagers who were crossing the train tracks at the time. At least 14 other people were injured in the accident – three of which were in a critical condition, according to officials on the scene.
The deceased, it is believed, were on their way to the San Juan summer festival having just arrived by train themselves. In their hurry to get to their destination, though, they crossed the tracks rather than using the proper pedestrian underpass, which, according to witnesses, was crowded and slow moving.
Fernando Ortega, one of the witnesses to the accident, told Spanish media that the platform on which the youngsters had just arrived was ‘very full’, which prompted a large group of people ‘to jump across the tracks and cross to the other side of the station’. “At that moment,” he continued, “a train came from the other direction and ran everyone over.” Another witness claimed the door to the underpass was not open to train passengers: “The door was closed and we could not get through, so we tried to go through the side of the train, and there was no light and nobody alerted us that the train was coming. We were more than 30 people.”
The accident is the worst rail disaster in Spain since 2003, when 19 people were killed when two trains collided near the central town of Chinchilla.