Spain begins 3 days of mourning for train wreck victims as death toll rises to 42

ADAMUZ, Spain (AP) - Spanish emergency workers searched Tuesday for more victims in the wreckage of a deadly train accident in southern Spain that killed at least 41 people, as the nation began three days of mourning for the victims.

Spanish Transport Minister Óscar Puente said the official toll of Sunday's accident had risen by one to 41 when another corpse was discovered as a crane lifted a damaged train carriage.

Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska added that searchers have located three more bodies still trapped in the wreckage. It was not immediately clear if those were included in the official death toll. Officials have repeatedly warned that that death count may rise.

Amid the tragedy, it emerged that a six-year-old girl survived the wreck without major injury, while her parents, brother and cousin all perished.

The crash took place Sunday at 7:45 p.m. when the tail end of a train carrying 289 passengers on the route from Malaga to the capital, Madrid, went off the rails. It slammed into an incoming train traveling from Madrid to Huelva, another southern city, according to rail operator Adif.

The head of the second train, which was carrying 184 people, took the brunt of the impact. That collision knocked its first two carriages off the track and sent them plummeting down a 4-meter (13-foot) slope. Some bodies were found hundreds of meters (feet) from the crash site, according to Andalusia regional President Juanma Moreno.

The images taken Tuesday by an Associated Press photographer show the completely destroyed remains of the first two cars of the second train, severed from the rest of the train and lying beside the tracks. Train seats had been ejected onto the rocks that provide packing under the tracks.

Down the tracks a few hundred meters, Civil Guard officers inspected the interior of the first train with dogs, passengers' belongings scattered on the floor, according to the video distributed by authorities. The last carriage was lying on its side on the tracks, and the second-to-last carriage was leaning to one side with all its windows shattered.

Officials are continuing to investigate the causes of the accident that Puente has called "truly strange" since it occurred on a straight line and neither train was speeding.

But Puente said in interviews with Spanish media late Monday and early Tuesday that officials had found a broken section of track that could possibly be related to the accident's origin, while insisting that is just a hypothesis and that it could take weeks to reach any conclusions.

"Now we have to determine if that is a cause or a consequence (of the derailment)," Puente told Spanish radio Cadena Ser.

At this time, "all hypotheses are open," Grande Marlaska said at a press conference.

The technicians investigating the accident will analyze "the rails at the point where the derailment began and inspect the wheels" of the first train in a laboratory, he added.

The train that jumped the track belonged to the private company Iryo, while the second train, which took the brunt of the impact, belonged to Spain's public train company, Renfe. Iryo said in a statement Monday that its train was manufactured in 2022 and passed its latest safety check on Jan. 15.

Both Puente and Renfe president Álvaro Fernández said that both trains were traveling well under the speed limit of 250 kph (155 mph) and "human error could be ruled out."

The accident shook a nation that leads Europe in high-speed train mileage and takes pride in a network that is considered at the cutting edge of rail transport.

"It is undoubtedly a hard blow, and I have to work so it doesn't affect the credibility and strength of the network," Puente told Spanish national radio RNE on Tuesday when asked about the damage to the reputation of the rail system.

Spain's King Felipe and Queen Letizia visited the scene of the accident, where they greeted emergency workers as well as some local residents who helped in the initial stages of the rescue. Afterwards, they went to hospital in Cordoba where many of the injured remain under care.

Health authorities said that 39 people remained hospitalized on Tuesday morning, while 83 people were treated and discharged.

One of them was Emil Johnson, a Swedish citizen based in Malaga, who was traveling to Madrid to renew his passport.

"It was probably two, three seconds. And everything was broken," Jonsson, sitting in a wheelchair due to bruises on his ribs and back and dressed in part of a hospital gown, told reporters. "When we crashed, I didn't know who was alive and who was dead."

Meanwhile, Spain's Civil Guard is collecting DNA samples from family members who fear they have loved ones among the unidentified dead.

High-speed trains resumed service Tuesday from Madrid to Sevilla and Malaga, the largest cities in Andalusia, Spain's most populous region, but passengers had to travel a stretch of the journey by buses provided by the rail service. Minister Puente said that the normal train service won't resume until early February.

Spanish airline Iberia added more flights to southern cities until Sunday to help stranded travelers. Some bus companies also reinforced their services in the south.