Speeding train runs over revelers in Spain, killing 12

12 killed as train hits pedestrians in Spain

CASTELLDEFELS, Spain — A train speeding through a seaside rail station in northeast Spain plowed into a group of youths crossing the tracks to get to a beach party marking the start of summer, killing at least 12 and injuring 14, officials said Thursday.

The youths had just got off a commuter train that arrived in Castelldefels near Barcelona shortly before midnight Wednesday and rather than use an underpass to get out of the station, an estimated 30 of them tried to cross the tracks on foot, witnesses said.

In a matter of seconds, a long-distance train that was not scheduled to stop at that station barreled into them at a high rate of speed.

Marcelo Cardona, a Bolivian in his 30s who was on the commuter train, described the scene as hellish as people looking forward to a beach party with a bonfire were run over. He said the youths crossed “in a wave” but he himself held back and waited on the platform.

“The euphoria of getting off the train immediately became screams. There were people screaming, ‘my daughter, my sister,’” Cardona said.

Cardona said he saw “mutilated people, blood everywhere, blood on the platform.”

The final toll was 12 dead and 14 injured, said Nacho Solano, a spokesman for the Catalonia regional government’s civil protection department. Three of the injured are in critical condition.

An earlier toll put the number injured at 17.

It was Spain’s deadliest train accident since 2003, when 19 people died in a collision between a passenger train and a freight train.