Spain Searches Wreckage After Second High-Speed Rail Disaster of the Year Leaves 69 Dead

Rescue crews with sniffer dogs kept searching for victims on Thursday morning, a day after one high-speed train struck another from behind in central Spain. The collision has killed 69 people, and officials say the toll is provisional and could still rise.

Cranes helped move the carriages while police and soldiers sorted through wreckage scattered down a gravel slope, where at least three carriages were thrown by the impact. Emiliano García-Page, the regional leader of Castilla La Mancha, said one more body was found overnight. He said a crane would lift a damaged carriage that had overturned, and that 50 people remained in hospital. "Besides bodies, there are body parts that need to be identified," he said. Spain's government has declared three days of mourning starting Thursday.

Global Affairs Canada told CBC News on Wednesday that it knows of six Canadians injured in the crash, while a seventh person is unaccounted for. The department did not say how serious the injuries were, citing privacy considerations. It said Canadian officials are providing consular assistance and are in contact with local authorities.

The crash is the second deadly one on Spain's high-speed network this year. In January, 46 people died when a train left the track and hit another traveling the opposite way in southern Spain. Both accidents happened on the same line and involved one train run by state-owned RENFE and another run by privately owned IRYO. The network is the world's second largest after China's, and had no deadly crash in the three decades since it opened until this year.

Transport Minister Óscar Puente, who was asked whether he would resign, said he was focused on responding to the collision rather than his own future. He blamed what he called an "inexplicable" order from a central command centre, and said the train engineers were not at fault.

According to Puente, a computer malfunction disabled the security system on a 63-kilometre stretch at 8:30 a.m. local time, stopping all trains there. The IRYO train halted near the town of Urda, with the RENFE train 25 kilometres behind. A few minutes later, central command told the RENFE train to resume without speed restrictions, and it hit the stationary IRYO train at 8:53 a.m. Puente said a stop signal was still active, and that at minimum the train should have been told to move at reduced speed. The Madrid to Seville line was shut down, stranding thousands of travellers.

The disaster comes four weeks before Spain's national election on Nov. 29, the first in more than three years. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez visited the site in Toledo province on Wednesday and promised an investigation and improvements. "It is not acceptable for a country like Spain to endure two high-speed train accidents in the same year," he said.

Sánchez and his Socialists already face a difficult race, with polls showing an uphill battle. Housing costs and high rents prompted the early election call, and he also faces criticism over migration policy and corruption accusations against his party and his wife, which both deny.

Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo of the People's Party demanded a full investigation and said his party cancelled its campaign events for the day out of respect for the victims. Vox leader Santiago Abascal took a harsher line, calling the government "a criminal organization" and vowing to see it answer for its crimes in court.