A train speeding through a seaside rail station plowed into a group of youths taking a shortcut across the tracks to get to a beach party, killing at least 12 and injuring 14, Spanish officials said on Thursday.
It was Spain’s deadliest train accident since 2003, when 19 people died in a collision between passenger and freight trains in the south-eastern town of Chinchilla.
The youths got off a commuter train in the popular beach resort of Castelldefels outside Barcelona shortly before midnight on Wednesday for the party marking the start of summer.
About 30 climbed down off the platform and tried to cross the tracks instead of using an underpass to leave the station, witnesses said.
A long-distance train that was not scheduled to stop at the station barrelled into the youths at high speed, its whistle shrieking.
Mr Marcelo Cardona, who was on the commuter train, said the victims had been looking forward to dancing around a bonfire on the beach. “The euphoria of getting off the train immediately became screams. There were people screaming, ‘my daughter! my sister!”’ said Cardona, a 34-year-old Bolivian. The newspaper El Pais said, without citing sources, that except for one 45-year-old woman, the dead and injured were between the ages of 17 and 26. Cardona said he saw “mutilated people, blood everywhere, blood on the platform.”