FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The death toll from a train crash in Spain has risen to 40. More than 150 others were injured, as the country remains reeling from the tragedy that occurred on Sunday afternoon.
Meanwhile, efforts to identify the victims are continuing, with reports that 43 people are missing, although there are suspicions that some of them may be among those who lost their lives.
Of the injured, 39 remain in hospital for medical assistance, while 13 of them are in intensive care.
Experts are investigating the causes of the tragedy, while technical teams are collecting evidence at the accident site.
The derailed train collided with a train coming from the opposite direction. The accident occurred near Adamuth, in the province of Cordoba, about 360 kilometers south of Madrid.
Technicians who rushed to the scene and are analyzing the tracks saw some wear at the joint connecting the two parallel railway tracks, indicating that the problem has existed for a long time, the source said.
Technicians who analyzed the tracks at the accident site found wear at the connection between sections of track, known as "fish plate."
They even determined, based on initial findings, that the damaged coupler was creating a gap between two sections of track, which widened as trains continued to use it, Reuters reports in an exclusive report.
The source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, said experts believe the damaged connection is crucial in determining the exact cause of the accident.
According to the newspaper El Pais, the three scenarios being considered are: damage to the line, technical problems with the train or a case of interaction. The latter, in fact, concerns "moving goods affected by a small defect in the infrastructure that causes an excessive reaction", an engineer explained to the newspaper, and it seems that after the findings of the technicians, there is an increasing probability.
The Spanish Railway Accident Investigation Commission (CIAF), which is responsible for the overall investigation into the causes of the disaster, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
At the time of the collision, both trains were traveling at speeds over 190 kilometers per hour.
According to a source familiar with the investigation, the first carriages of the train operated by Spanish company Iryo crossed the gap in the tracks, but the eighth and last carriage derailed, taking the seventh and sixth with it. Iryo is a private railway operator, with the main shareholder being the Italian state-controlled group Ferrovie dello Stato.
At 7:45 p.m. on Sunday, the train traveling from Malaga to Madrid's Atocha station, the largest in the Spanish capital, with 294 passengers on board, derailed near the small town of Adamuth (population 4,200) in Cordoba. It crossed onto adjacent tracks and collided with another train traveling in the opposite direction, from Madrid to Huelva in Andalusia, with about 187 passengers on board.
At the time of the collision, according to official sources, the first train was traveling at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour.
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