A commuter train has struck a collapsed retaining wall in Spain, killing the driver and injuring 36 people, Spanish authorities said.
The accident occurred due to heavy rain near the Spanish city of Barcelona, and five people have been left seriously injured.
It has come just two days after 42 people were killed in a high-speed train collision and derailment near Adamuz in the southern Córdoba province.
Claudi Gallardo, inspector at the Catalonia regional fire department, said in televised comments from the site of the crash that 37 people had been injured, four of them seriously, and the driver had died. He said all passengers had been removed from the train.
Catalonia’s civil protection agency later revised the injury toll to 36, and said five were in a serious condition and five in a less serious condition. It said 26 were in a “mild” condition, according to an online translation.
Police in Catalonia said the Central Airport and Public Transport Area, which is responsible for investigating railway accidents, has launched initial investigations into the accident.
Twenty ambulances were dispatched to the site in Gelida on the outskirts of Barcelona along with 38 firefighter units, emergency services authorities said.
The suburban train derailment occurred in an area long plagued by underfunded rail services and frequent incidents.
A support centre for relatives of those affected by the accident has been set up at the Casablanca Urbanisation civic centre, the civil protection agency added.
In a separate incident on Tuesday night, traffic between Blanes and Maçanet-Massanes south of the city of Girona – also part of the Barcelona commuter rail network – was interrupted “due to a train axle coming off the track”, Spanish rail operator Adif said in a statement on X.
On Sunday, 42 people were killed and dozens more injured when two high-speed trains collided in southern Spain on Sunday evening, in one of Europe’s worst railway accidents in 80 years.
The crash happened at 7.45pm local time near Adamuz, a town of about 5,000 people in the province of Córdoba, according to Spain’s interior ministry.
The tail end of a train run by private high-speed rail operator Iryo, travelling from Málaga to Madrid, was derailed and jumped onto an adjacent track, where it smashed into an oncoming Renfe service travelling from Madrid to Huelva, a municipality in Spain. Renfe is Spain’s national state-owned railway company.
Spanish state-owned rail operator Adif said the Iryo train derailed first and crashed into the second train, pushing it off the tracks and down a railway embankment.