Lavandeira Jr / EPA
Scores are killed and injured in a train derailment in NW Spain.
By Becky Bratu and Jason Cumming, NBC News
At least 77 people were killed and up to 131 injured after a train crashed in northwestern Spain on Wednesday, officials said.
Images from the scene showed bodies covered in blankets and towels lying next to toppled and crushed carriages as a plume of smoke billowed from the wreckage near Santiago de Compostela. Rescuers worked to pull survivors out of broken windows.?
"It was going so quickly. ... It seems that on a curve the train started to twist, and the wagons piled up one on top of the other," passenger Ricardo Montesco told Cadena Ser radio station, according to Reuters. "A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the wagons to get out and we realized the train was burning ... I was in the second wagon and there was fire ... I saw corpses."
There are reports of as many as 100 people wounded and doezens dead in a train derailment in northwestern Spain. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
The train?was traveling between Madrid and Ferrol. The crash occurred as Santiago de Compostela prepared for the festival of Saint James, when thousands of Christian pilgrims from across the world pack the streets.?
"The scene is shocking, it's Dante-esque," the head of Spain's Galicia region, Alberto Nunez Feijoo,?said in a radio interview, according to Reuters.
Feijoo said it was too early to say what had caused the derailment.?
El Pais newspaper cited sources close to the investigation as saying the train was travelling at over twice the speed limit on a sharp curve. NBC News was unable to immediately confirm the report.
Reuters quoted a source as saying that investigators were "moving away from the hypothesis of sabotage or attack."
A statement released by Renfe, a?state-owned company that operates freight and passenger trains, read:?"An Alvia train traveling between Madrid and Ferrol has derailed upon entering the station of Santiago de Compostela at 8:41 p.m. [local time]. The train was traveling on high-speed tracks carrying a total of 218 passengers in addition to the crew."
Reuters
Rescue workers pull victims from a train crash near Santiago de Compostela, Spain, on Wednesday.
A Spanish government spokeswoman said Prime Minister?Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, was due to visit the accident site on Thursday morning.
The crash happened on the eve of the city's main festival, which focuses on St. James, one of Jesus's 12 disciples, whose remains are said to rest in the city.?
Santiago de Compostela's tourism board said all the festivities, including Wednesday's traditional High Mass at the centuries-old cathedral, were canceled as the city went into mourning.?
Wednesday's derailment was one of the worst rail accidents in Europe over the past 25 years.
In November 2000, 155 people were killed when a fire in a tunnel engulfed a funicular train packed with skiers in Austria.
In Montenegro, up to 46 people were killed and nearly 200 injured in 2006 when a packed train derailed and plunged into a ravine outside the capital, Podgorica.
And in Spain, 41 people were killed the same year when an underground train derailed and overturned in a tunnel just before entering the Jesus metro station in Valen
Reuters contributed to this report.?
This story was originally published on Wed Jul 24, 2013 9:23 PM EDT
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