Spain begins three days of mourning for deadly accident

Spain woke to flags at half staff on Tuesday as the nation began three days of mourning for the victims of the deadly train accident in the country’s south, while emergency crews continue searching for possible bodies.The official death toll of Sunday’s accident rose to 40 by late Monday. But officials warned that that count may not be definitive, with emergency workers still probing for bodies among what Andalusian regional president Juanma Moreno called “a twisted mass of metal.”

Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told Spanish national television RTVE late Monday that searchers believe they have found three more bodies still trapped in the wreckage. Those bodies are not included in the official count, the minister said. 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 Spanish city, according to rail operator Adif. The head of the second train, which was carrying nearly 200 passengers, 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, Moreno said.