At least 39 dead, dozens injured after high-speed trains collide in Spain

( NBC )

A high-speed train collision killed at least 39 people, Spanish authorities said Monday, as they worked to piece together what may have led to the deadly crash.

The tail end of an evening train traveling from Malaga to Madrid with some 300 passengers went off the rails near Córdoba at 7:45 p.m. local time, officials said. It slammed into a train traveling from Madrid to Huelva, another southern Spanish city, according to rail operator Adif.

Spain’s Civil Guard updated the death toll to at least 39 early Monday. It told NBC News that the national protocol for responding to mass casualty incidents had been activated and that its personnel, including experts in fingerprinting and DNA analysis, were joining the effort to identify the victims.

The nationalities of the victims are still unknown.

Andalusia's regional president, Juanma Moreno, said 75 passengers were hospitalized, including 15 in very serious condition. The region was “heartbroken,” he added in a statement on X.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez promised a “thorough and absolutely transparent” investigation into the crash at a news conference in Adamuz, where many locals helped emergency services handle the influx of passengers overnight. “Today is a day of pain for all of Spain,” he added.

Earlier his office said that he would would not travel to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland which started on Monday.

Adif, which manages Spain’s state-owned railway infrastructure, said high-speed rail services between Madrid and a number of cities in Andalusia would be suspended Monday in the aftermath of the collision.

The cause of the accident was not yet confirmed, but Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente called it “truly strange” because it happened on a flat stretch of track that had been renovated in May.

He said the train that jumped the track was less than four years old. That train belonged to the private company Iryo, while the second train, which took the brunt of the impact, was part of Spain’s public train company Renfe.

Puente added that the back part of the first train derailed and crashed into the head of the other train, knocking its first two carriages off the track and down a 13-foot slope. He said the worst damage was to the front section of the Renfe train.

Iryo said in a post on X that it “deeply regretted” what happened and had activated all emergency protocols. Renfe chief Álvaro Fernández Heredia called the incident “a tragedy that affects us all.”

Video verified by NBC News showed the aftermath of the accident, with one of the badly mangled trains leaning on its side as a passenger tries to climb out of the window.

Salvador Jiménez, a journalist for Spanish broadcaster RTVE, was on board one of the derailed trains and told the network by phone that “there was a moment when it felt like an earthquake and the train had indeed derailed.”

He said passengers used emergency hammers to break the windows, and that some had walked away without serious injuries.

Spain has the largest high-speed rail network in Europe for trains moving more than 155 mph, with more than 1,900 miles of track, according to the European Union.

The network is a popular, competitively priced and safe mode of transport.

The country’s worst train accident this century occurred in 2013, when 80 people died after a train derailed in the country’s northwest.

An investigation concluded the train was traveling 111 mph on a stretch with a 50-mph speed limit when it left the tracks.