At least 68 people have died in a high-speed train collision in Spain, with 544 passengers on board. The crash occurred after a technical failure halted all services, but the control center allowed trains to resume despite the system not being restored.
Spanish transport minister Oscar Puente confirmed that 69km of track were affected by an outage of the automatic control system, which caused all trains to stop automatically. The decision to resume traffic while the system was not restored is described as inexplicable.
The collision involved a state train and a private train, with the state train traveling up to 200 km/h before colliding with a stationary train. The incident is the second major train crash in Spain this year, following a similar tragedy in January.
The incident has raised concerns about rail safety in Spain, with the government planning to investigate the incident and address potential failures.