MADRID – MADRID (AP) — A passenger train crashed into a heavy-duty dump truck in southwestern Spain on Monday, killing two people and injuring eight others, a government official said.
The collision occurred about 1 p.m. Monday near the town of Carmonita, 56 miles (90 kilometers) from the border with Portugal, a regional spokeswoman for Spain's Interior Ministry said.
The large truck was supporting work on Spain's bullet train link to Portugal when the three-carriage regional train slammed into it and lifted the truck partially onto its roof, she said. The impact caused all the carriages to derail.
A young woman, Olga Nunez, 19, aboard the train and the truck driver, Eduardo Duran, 25, were killed, and the seriously injured train driver was flown to Infanta Cristina hospital in the nearby city of Badajoz, said Agustin Guerrero, mayor of Carmonita.
Emergency crews were working to clear the wreckage and investigators were trying to figure out the reason for the crash, the spokeswoman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with ministry rules.
Bullet trains are scheduled to run from Portugal's capital, Lisbon, to Madrid in under three hours by 2014 despite budget cuts caused by the financial crisis.
High-speed lines will eventually stretch from Portugal's Atlantic coast, through France to Britain and Belgium, providing Europe with fast passenger transport to rival air travel.
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