More than 60 people have been killed and 131 have been injured in a train accident in Santiago de Compostela city of Spain.
Accident occurred shortly before 9 p.m on Wednesday when all eight carriages of the high-speed passenger train ran off the tracks. Seach and rescue operation is still being carried out.
Injured have been taken to nearby hospital.
There were some 247 people on board the train which was traveling from Madrid to the Galician port of Ferrol.
Local residents said they heard a loud noise and then saw the train split into segments.
The locomotive and the first four passenger cars ran off the rails, another car vaulted over an embankment and came to rest near some homes and the remainder of the cars flipped over, witnesses said.
Development Minister Ana Pastor is at the accident scene and remains in contact with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, officials said.
King Juan Carlos also contacted the appropriate authorities as soon as he learned of the crash.
Authorities do not yet know what caused the accident, but one of the main hypotheses is excessive speed.
Due to the number of victims known so far, the Madrid-Ferrol tragedy is the third most serious train accident in Spanish history, and it is also the first accident with fatalities to occur in Spain on a high-speed rail line.
(with inputs from IANS)
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