Emergency crews are responding after a train collided with a construction crane in near Spain’s Cartagena. The incident has added to growing scrutiny of rail safety after two serious accidents this week.
A commuter train collided with a construction crane in Cartagena in southeastern Spain on Thursday, injuring several people, including one who was seriously hurt.
The collision, in the Murcia region, comes days after a high-speed train crash in Andalusia killed at least 43 people and another rail accident in Catalonia earlier this week left a train driver dead.
In an online post, Spain’s rail infrastructure operator Adif said traffic on the affected line had been halted due to “the intrusion into the infrastructure gauge by a crane not belonging to the railway operation.”
The company did not provide further details. It remains unclear how the crane came to obstruct the track or whether safety procedures were breached. Investigations into the crash are underway as rail services remain disrupted.
A spokeswoman for the national rail operator Renfe said there had been “several minor injuries.”
“It’s a commuter train, and the crane belongs to someone else, it’s not ours,” the spokeswoman told the AFP news agency, stating that it was the crane that “hit the train.”
Spanish train drivers had already called a three-day strike after two fatal rail accidents within days have raised doubts about the safety of the network.
The SEMAF union said the deadly crashes in Adamuz and Gelida, which killed 43 people and one person respectively, marked a turning point and justified strike action on February 9, 10, and 11. The call follows a second accident on Tuesday in Catalonia, just two days after the Adamuz tragedy.
SEMAF said the accidents demand all necessary measures to guarantee the safety of rail operations. Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente said he understood the mood of train drivers but rejected a general strike as the best response, voicing full confidence in Spain’s rail system.
Puente said Spain should not question its rail network or public transport, calling it a strong system despite not being perfect or infallible.
The second accident occurred around 9 p.m. local time near Gelida, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Barcelona, when a retaining wall collapsed onto the tracks and struck a short-distance train.
