Putin condoles to Spanish king over victims in railroad accident in Galicia

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed condolences to King Juan Carlos I of Spain on the losses of lives in a railroad accident in Galicia. In his telegram on Thursday, Putin said: “Russia shares the grief caused to the friendly Spanish people.” The number of dead as a result of Wednesday’s train accident in Spain has reached 77, 143 people received injuries of varying severity in the train wreck. The authorities believe the catastrophe was an accident. The Renfe transport company reported that the train on the way from Madrid to Ferrol in the northwest of the country on Wednesday was carrying 218 passengers. At 20:41 local time the train set derailed at the approach to Santiago de Compostela station, in the administrative centre Galicia. The train cars overturned, hitting one another. According to El Mundo newspaper, the train driver exceeded the speed limit by 140 km per hour. The Russian Embassy in Madrid said that nobody has turned to it so far in connection with the train crash in Galicia. Representatives of rescue services told Itar-Tass by telephone that it is yet premature to specify the nationality of those killed in the crash. The chairman of the autonomous government refrained from commenting on the reasons for the catastrophe. However, the surviving passengers of the train, which was bound from Madrid to Ferrol (a city in north-western tip of Spain), drew attention to the fact that at the approach to the capital of Galicia - Santiago de Compostela - the train jumped the tracks on “a difficult curve.” Local newspapers reported that the survived train engineer repeated only one phrase: "The train ran off the track. I couldn't do anything". The second engineer also came to no harm. He dismissed the possibility of a terror atack. Earlier, a representative of the Internal Affairs Ministry expressed the same point of view to Spain's news agency EFE.