Survivors of the high-speed train crash in southern Spain described chaotic and hellish scenes on Monday, telling of wrecked train cars, falling luggage and the sound of screams.
Several passengers posted accounts on social media after the collision in Adamuz, near the city of Córdoba. At least 39 people were killed and dozens more injured, officials said.
Salvador Jiménez, a journalist with RTVE, Spain’s national public broadcaster, said he was a passenger in the first car of one of the trains. “There was a moment when it felt like an earthquake,” Mr. Jiménez told the broadcaster.
María Vidal, 32, told the Spanish newspaper El País that medics had rushed to the mangled cars after of the crash, and that ambulances had carried away the dead and injured.
“I’m in shock,” Ms. Vidal said. “Horrible screams. I’m shaking.”
Photographs from the scene published by news agencies on Monday show wrecked train cars at odd angles across train tracks and a tangled mess of metal, wires and broken glass. At least one car had tipped onto its side, and rescue workers were on top of it. Footage showed some survivors climbing out of smashed windows.
Some bodies were thrown from the train cars.
“The impact was so severe that we have found bodies hundreds of meters from the impact,” Mr. Moreno, the regional president, said on Spanish radio, the national broadcaster said.
Some survivors were hurried to safe areas in nearby fields. One survivor, identified by El País only as Ana, who was traveling with her sister and dog, said that she saw people dying and could not help them.
“We could see that they were slipping away, and there was nothing we could do about it,” she told reporters.
She said that her sister was rescued by firefighters and taken to the hospital. “Now that she’s under observation and waiting,” she said, “I’m taking the opportunity to look for my dog.”
Gonzalo Sánchez Aguilar, 46, happened to be driving his car near the crash site and went to help. He said he saw seven or eight dead bodies as he loaded injured survivors into his car and rushed them to a hospital.
“I saw a lot of dead bodies,” he said in an interview. “Really bad injuries.”
The mayor of Adamuz, Rafael Ángel Moreno, rushed to the crash site and described “a terrible scene.”
“People were trying to get out of the train, there were many injured. It was utter chaos,” he said, his voice quavering. “We are continuing to work to recover the last bodies.”
Amelia Nierenberg contributed reporting.
Ali Watkins covers international news for The Times and is based in Belfast.
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