Thursday, June 24, 2010

Beach revellers train crash kills 13 in Spain


GEO 436 CASTELLDEFELS: An express train slammed into a group of young revellers crossing the tracks to get to a beach party in northeast Spain, killing 13 people and injuring 14, officials said Thursday. “The impact was brutal. The sound was like that of rocks being crushed but it was humans,” one witness to the disaster, named as Andres, told the daily newspaper El Mundo. The accident happened as about 30 people who had got off a local train at the Castelldefels Playa station, some 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Barcelona, tried to cross the tracks at around 11:30 pm (2130 GMT) Wednesday. They were heading to the nearby beach for the annual San Juan festival that celebrates the start of the summer in parts of Spain and which includes bonfires, fireworks and dancing. A passenger express train travelling to Barcelona from the southeastern city of Alicante then ploughed into the group on the tracks. “It is a day of sadness and mourning on a night that should be of festivity, of a street party,” the president of the regional government of Catalonia, Jose Montilla, said after visiting the scene. Analysis of the remains by forensic experts revealed that 13 people were killed, Catalonia’’s justice minister, Montserrat Tura, said late Thursday. Authorities had earlier put the death toll at 12. One of the 14 injured is in critical condition and two others are in serious condition, the Catalonian health minister, Marina Geli, told a news conference.

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