Official: Four US citizens, Canadian among Spain train crash dead

MADRID, (Spain): Four US citizens and one each from Canada, Japan, Argentina, Mexico, Tunisia and the Czech Republic were among the 69 killed in last week's high-speed train collision in Spain, authorities said.

Wednesday's disaster — one of Europe's deadliest rail accidents this century — has seen victims' relatives endure an agonising wait as forensics teams identify the dead, sometimes from individual body parts.

A legal body set up to handle the identification work, made up of police and forensics experts, announced in a statement late on Sunday the 10 latest confirmed foreign victims.

It had already announced the deaths of a French and a Portuguese citizen, as well as that of 54 Spaniards.

All but three of the victims are now identified, the statement added.

Three reports for missing people remain active, the authorities said. They concern two Australians and one Japanese citizen.

"As the contacted families have expressed their wish to travel to Spain to carry out in-person identification, we are awaiting their arrival in the country," the statement said.

The accident was Spain's second high-speed train collision this year and raised fresh questions about the country's rail safety, after a crash in the southern region of Andalusia in January killed 46 people.

The latest disaster struck when a service by state operator Renfe ploughed into the back of a stationary train belonging to Spanish company Iryo outside the central village of Urda, around 130 kilometres (80 miles) south of Madrid.

The failure of an automatic safety system halted all trains on a 63-kilometre stretch of track, but a control centre authorised the Renfe service to resume its journey while the other train was still.

The tragedy came one month before a November 29 general election in which Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez will seek to overcome unfavourable polls and extend his eight-year premiership. — AFP