The death toll from the serious train crash in southern Spain has climbed to 45 after the bodies of two more men were found in the wreckage, the Andalusian regional government reported on Thursday.
The men are thought to be the two people who were still listed as missing after the accident, which occurred when two high-speed trains collided near Adamuz on Sunday evening. Formal identification by the Córdoba forensic medicine institute has yet to be carried out.
They were found in a carriage that plunged some four metres down an embankment and was particularly severely damaged.
The official number of people injured stands at 123, with 31 still in hospital. Six people remain in intensive care, the Andalusian emergency services reported on X. None of them are reported to be in danger of losing their lives, however.
There were three foreigners among the dead, all women, one from Germany, one from Russia and one from Morocco, according to the Guardia Civil.
The regional president of Andalusia, Juanma Moreno, said there were no more missing persons and that the search for victims had been called off.
Identification of the victims was problematic, with the authorities calling for DNA samples from families suspecting they might have lost relatives.
The first 43 bodies have now been identified, but names have not been published. The first funeral was held in Spain on Thursday.
The cause of the accident, one of the worst in the country’s history, remains unknown, with track damage or a fault in one of the trains not ruled out. Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska did rule out sabotage.
Transport Minister Óscar Puente confirmed media information on irregularities found but said it remained unclear whether they were linked to the accident. Premature speculation was disrespectful to the victims, he said.
Just two days after Sunday’s accident, a trainee train driver died in an accident involving a commuter train in Gelida to the west of Barcelona. Dozens of passengers were injured, five of them seriously.
Yet another rail accident occurred on Thursday, when a small commuter train hit a crane in Murcia in the east of the country. Six people were slightly injured.
Spain’s train drivers’ union has called a national three-day strike starting on February 9 to back demands for greater safety and reliability on the network. The accident series had caused severe emotional problems among its members, it said.
Legally required minimum services are expected to mitigate the strike’s effects.
