00:00At least 39 people have been killed in Spain after two trains collided on the high-speed line
00:04between Madrid and Seville. It's according to local authorities speaking to Sky News. The
00:10crash happened just after 9am local time in the central Spanish province of Toledo. Reports from
00:18the Spanish channel TVE suggesting the trains were heading in the same direction. One rang into the
00:23tail of the other knocking the cars off track. We have had a comment on social media which says
00:32shocked by the serious train accident in Toledo I remain in constant contact with the Minister
00:37of Transport and with the President of Castilla La Mancha. This is coming from Pedro Sanchez.
00:47So a tweet from him saying that he is shocked by the serious accident in Toledo. It goes on to
00:55say
00:55emergency services are working on the ground to assist those affected and ensure their safety
00:59and coordination with all those involved. My affection, solidarity and support to all the
01:06victims and their families. That's from the Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Both two main parties have
01:11paused their campaigning. Of course they're in the midst of a general election campaign in Spain that's
01:15due to take place 30 days from now. We're joined by the freelance journalist Simon Hunter in Madrid.
01:22Simon, what more can you tell us of this tragic accident?
01:27Well, at the moment, I mean, this is a breaking story. We haven't got a huge amount of information,
01:34but according to local reports in the media here, this involved an AVE train and an IRIO train. There are
01:41different companies that run these high-speed rail links, and these are actually the same
01:48companies that were involved in that devastating accident that we saw earlier in the year further
01:54south in Andalusia, in Córdoba, which saw about 46 victims, about 120 people killed. And according to
02:02the initial reporting coming from the Spanish media, the IRIO train was stationary on the track when it was
02:07struck from behind by the other AVE train. The pictures that we're seeing, passengers who were
02:15on the trains, who were sharing their pictures, sharing their videos, the pictures look absolutely
02:20devastating. Similarly to that previous accident this year, one of the carriages has ended up in
02:27a ditch in the embankment, according to the pictures that we're seeing coming from the scene.
02:33And there is also a line in the Alpais reporting that says that government sources are suggesting that
02:40this actually could be worse than that accident that we saw earlier in the year, which is just
02:45devastating news for the confidence in Spain's railway system. So is this something that
02:55there is a lack of confidence in already? Well, so the railway system, the high-speed railway system
03:05in Spain is very much the pride of many Spaniards. It's a very new, modern system. It only began
03:10construction in the 90s, famously with the Seville Expo. The government is very much behind the
03:15high-speed railway system, trying to encourage people to take it rather than flying between cities such as
03:21Madrid and Barcelona, for example. So when the accident happened early this year in Adamuth,
03:29which actually resulted to be because of a section of broken track, it very much did shake
03:35Spaniards' confidence in this system, which until now has been seen as a very safe, very fast,
03:42very efficient system. So for this collision to come so closely off the back of that accident earlier
03:49in the year, there are going to be a huge amount of questions asked. I mean, in this case, it
03:55looks,
03:55the initial reporting is suggesting that this could have been a problem in terms of the
04:00signalling, in terms of the instructions coming from the control centre here in central Madrid,
04:06a Tocha train station, because obviously what we've seen here is a train crash into
04:13the back of another stationary train rather than what happened earlier this year, which was a
04:18piece of broken track. So there are going to be a huge amount of questions asked as to whether
04:22the safety systems were working properly, whether this was human error, basically how this could have
04:30been avoided, because it is shaping up to be a much more devastating accident than we saw earlier this year.
04:39Simon, thanks for joining us. We appreciate it. And Sky News will continue to have more
04:43on that breaking tragic story throughout the day.
