Four American citizens were among at least 69 people killed in a high speed train crashed into the back of another train in central Spain last week, officials said Sunday.
The Integrated Data Center, the Spanish legal body responsible for identifying victims of events leading to a high death toll, said Sunday evening that the victims of the country’s second deadly train collision this year also included a citizen of Canada, Japan, Argentina, Mexico, Tunisia and the Czech Republic. Two Australian citizens and one Japanese citizen remain missing, Agence France-Presse and local media reported.
The center, which had already announced the deaths of a French and Portuguese citizen as well as 54 Spaniards, said all but three of the victims had been identified.
“The families contacted having expressed their wish to go to Spain to carry out personal identification, we are awaiting their arrival in the country,” indicates the press release, reported by AFP.
Oscar DEL POZO /AFP via Getty Images 
The accident occurred on the morning of October 28 in Urda, Toledo province, when the high-speed train slammed into the rear of another train that had stopped, derailing two carriages. Authorities said 58 people were injured.
The two trains, with more than 540 people on board, were heading in the same direction, from Madrid to Seville.
Transport Minister Óscar Puente blamed much of what went wrong on the poor judgment of a traffic controller. However, rail unions backed down, citing deteriorating working conditions. They say too few screeners are handling growing workloads, making it increasingly difficult to ensure the safety of millions of passengers.
Independent investigators said their initial findings indicated that the public RENFE train was traveling at a speed of between 100 and 200 km/h when it hit the private IRYO train.
This is the second major accident on the Madrid-Seville line this year. In Januarymore than two hours further south, a train derailed and struck another traveling in the opposite direction, killing 46 people. This accident remains under investigation.
Spain’s high-speed rail network, the second in the world after China’s, has long been seen as a success of state industrial policy. Until this year, it had not recorded a single fatal accident since it was commissioned more than thirty years ago.
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