The train accident in Spain’s Toledo province has some similarities to the Cordoba province train crash earlier this year that killed more than 40 people.
Both train collisions occurred on the same high-speed rail line that runs between the capital Madrid and Seville, about 300 miles south.
The Toledo accident occurred about 210 miles from the scene of a January train crash near Adams, Cordova County. Following Wednesday’s accident, authorities suspended the high-speed line connecting the Madrid region and Andalusia.
Both train accidents involved two high-speed trains colliding, but one of Wednesday’s trains was not traveling at high speed at the time of the accident.
Spanish emergency authorities have not yet announced the exact cause of Wednesday’s accident, but have released some details. Castilla-La Mancha’s 112 emergency services told CNN they received reports of the crash at 8:45 a.m. local time. According to reports, the train owned by Iliou was stopped or traveling at low speed when it collided with a high-speed train AVE operated by Spanish national railway company Renfe.
Officials at the scene told CNN that Wednesday’s crash appears to have been a rear-end collision. In a train accident earlier this year, one train derailed and fell onto adjacent tracks, according to Spanish public broadcaster RTVE.
Background: Spain’s train drivers’ union, Semaf, has previously raised concerns about high-speed rail causing vibrations and associated wear and tear along high-speed rail tracks, a union official told CNN in January in the aftermath of the accident near Adams.
The union has written to Adif, the national rail operator, asking it to reduce the maximum speed on all high-speed rail lines from 300 km/h to 250 km/h, as vibrations were occurring in some sections and straining the infrastructure, the official said.
CNN’s Pau Mosquera, Tim Lister and Sophie Tanno contributed to this report.
