Spain Train Crash: 66 of 69 Dead Identified, 3 Still Missing
Relatives have been informed in 60 of those cases, covering 36 men and 24 women, according to a Sunday-night bulletin from the identification coordination center.
Spaniards make up 54 of the 66 identified victims, and four were US citizens. The other eight each hailed from a different country: Argentina, Canada, Czechia, France, Japan, Mexico, Portugal and Tunisia.
Three missing-person cases remain open, involving two Australians and one Japanese national.
The dead include Fatima Banez, who served as Spain’s labor minister under former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, and Marisa Manchado, an award-winning Spanish composer who was on her way to a university event in Seville. Antonio Acedo, the 36-year-old driver of the Renfe train, and his assistant, Daniel Cabanas, also died. A spanish radio broadcaster reported that another victim was Julieta Gallego, a 24-year-old long jumper.
Since Wednesday, more than 60 specialists in Toledo have been conducting autopsies and identifying remains through fingerprints and DNA analysis.
Probe Into the Collision
The disaster unfolded Wednesday, when a Renfe high-speed train slammed into the back of a stationary Iryo train near Urda, in Toledo province. Transport Minister Oscar Puente said a malfunction in the automatic train protection system had stopped the trains, after which a controller cleared the Renfe train to return to normal speed.
The line linking Madrid and Seville was also the site of an earlier crash in January that killed 46 people.
Addressing the World in Progress forum on Monday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez pledged that independent investigators and the courts would be given the resources to determine what happened.
“Our main obligation as the government of Spain is to restore the public’s shattered confidence in high-speed rail as soon as possible, whatever it takes,” he said.
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