Spain: relatives to claim victims of train derailment

Forensic experts said all but one of the victims' bodies had been identified. Thirty were women and most were Spaniards, although Red Cross workers said there was at least one foreign national.

Photo: Spain: relatives to claim victims of train derailment

The subway train derailed and overturned on Monday in a tunnel near Jesus station in downtown Valencia. Authorities and witnesses said the train was going too fast and that one of its wheels had broken into pieces.

But Valencia's regional Transport Minister Jose Ramon Garcia Anton said preliminary inspections showed the wheels and the train tracks appeared to be in perfect condition. He said the likely cause was speeding.

Garcia Anton described the scene inside the tunnel as "alarming, a pile of twisted steel, bent and destroyed carriages, broken glass and bent doors."

Of the 47 people injured, 12 remained in hospital and two of those were reported to be in a critical condition.

The train was crowded, as the accident occurred shortly after 1 p.m. when many people would have been heading home for lunch.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero cut short a visit to India to travel to Valencia. Officials said he was expected to attend a funeral mass at Valencia's cathedral on Tuesday evening. King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia were also expected to attend the mass.

Hundreds of thousands of people were traveling to Valencia Tuesday for this week's World Meeting of the Families, to be attended Saturday and Sunday by Pope Benedict XVI.

Jorge Alvarez, secretary-general of the Independent Railway Union, said it was too early to blame Monday's accident on human error. He said his union repeatedly warned of safety problems on Valencia's 18-year-old subway system, particularly the No. 1 line.

More than 60 million people used Valencia's subway system in 2005 - some 165,000 people a day, according to its Web site. The subway has four lines and 116 stations in this city of 800,000 on the country's east coast, some 350 kilometers (220 miles) from Madrid.

In June 2003, 19 people were killed and 48 injured in a head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train in Chinchilla, central Spain.