Subway Death toll in Spain crosses 35
'Pakistan Times' Foreign Desk

MADRID (Spain): A subway train derailed and overturned in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia on Monday, killing more than 35 people and injuring about a dozen, a regional government spokesman said.

The likely cause of the accident was that the train was traveling at high speed and one of its wheels broke off, local government spokesman Luis Felipe Martinez said. A tunnel wall also may have collapsed onto the carriage, investigators said, according to news reports.

Officials said the accident occurred on the No. 1 line of Valencia's subway system as it was leaving Jesus station in downtown Valencia, one of Spain's biggest cities with a population of 800,000. It is on the country's east coast, about 220 miles southeast of Madrid.

Some 150 people were evacuated from the station, and Spanish National Radio reported that all survivors had been removed from the subway.

The number of dead will exceed 30, said Vicente Rambla of the Interior Ministry in Valencia. He said the death toll could range from 34 and 36, and some bodies were still inside the wrecked car.

Police cordoned off the area and an emergency mobile hospital was set up at the scene. Private TV station CNN-Plus showed emergency workers carrying the injured away on stretchers.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who is on an official visit to India, may cut his trip short, his office said. He was in constant contact with officials. King Juan Carlos expressed his condolences.

Hundreds of thousands of people have begun traveling to Valencia for this week's World Meeting of the Families, which will be attended July 8-9 by Pope Benedict XVI.

The Vatican said Benedict was praying for all those involved in the crash. Benedict was informed immediately and "has followed with pain ... the dramatic reports from that city," the Vatican said.

More than 60 million people used Valencia's subway system in 2005, according to the network's Web site, which averages out to some 165,000 people a day. The subway has four lines and 116 stations.

Recent mass transit accidents in Spain include one in Madrid in January 2005 in which about 20 people were slightly injured when a train with passengers bumped into an empty one at Madrid's Atocha station.

A more serious accident occurred in June 2003 when 19 people were killed and 48 injured in a head-on crash in central Spain. The crash, in which a passenger train collided with a freight train, occurred outside the station in the town of Chinchilla.

Bombs placed on commuter trains in Madrid by Islamic radicals killed 191 people in March 2004.●