27 Dead in Spanish Train Crash

Fourteen passengers and five train crew members are confirmed to have died when an inter-city train on its way from Madrid to Cartagena ran head on into a freight train late on Tuesday.

Firefighters at the site outside the medieval town of Chinchilla said yesterday that no one travelling first class in the first three coaches could have survived the fire that followed the collision. "If there had been the slightest chance someone was alive we would never have suspended the rescue operations," the provincial fire service said after efforts were halted overnight because of heat from the fire.

The train had 86 passengers and four crew aboard, and the freight train had two crew. Eight of the more than 40 people injured in the crash were still in hospital yester day. Besides those in the front coaches, local media quoted an official as saying six burnt bodies had been found in the restaurant car. Further bodies may yet be found.

The transport minister, Francisco Alvarez-Cascos, said a signalman at Chinchilla station had admitted causing the crash by mistakenly putting the two trains on the same track.

The accident is Spain's worst for 25 years, and the fourth this year involving a Talgo, as its distinctive inter-city passenger trains are called.