ADAMUZ, Spain — Officials said Monday that at least 40 people are confirmed dead in a high-speed rail collision the previous night in the country’s south when the tail end of a train jumped the track, causing another train speeding past in the opposite direction to derail.
Juanma Moreno, the president of Andalusia, the southern Spanish region where the accident happened, confirmed the new death toll in an afternoon press conference. Efforts to recover the bodies from the two wrecked train cars continued, he added.
The impact tossed the second train’s lead carriages off the track, sending them plummeting down a 13-foot slope. Some bodies were found hundreds of feet from the crash site, Mr. Moreno said earlier in the day, describing the wreckage as a “mass of twisted metal” with bodies likely still to be found inside.
Authorities are also focusing on attending hundreds of distraught family members and have asked for them to provide DNA samples to help identify victims.
The crash took place Sunday at 7:45 p.m. when the tail end of a train carrying 289 passengers on the route from Malaga to the capital, Madrid, went off the rails. It slammed into an incoming train traveling from Madrid to Huelva, another southern Spanish city, according to rail operator Adif.
The head of the second train, which was carrying nearly 200 passengers, took the brunt of the impact, Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said. That collision knocked its first two carriages off the track. Mr. Puente said that it appeared the largest number of the deaths occurred in those carriages.
Authorities said all the survivors had been rescued in the early morning.
The accident shook a nation which leads Europe in high-speed train mileage and takes pride in a network that is considered at the cutting edge of rail transport.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared three days of national mourning for the victims of the crash.
Passengers reported climbing out of smashed windows, with some using emergency hammers to break the glass.
Sunday’s accident was the first with deaths on a high-speed train since Spain’s high-speed rail network opened its first line in 1992.
Spain’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 179 kph (111 mph) on a stretch with an 80 kph (50 mph) speed limit when it left the tracks. That stretch of track was not high speed.
