Lavandeira Jr / EPA
Scores are killed and injured in a train derailment in NW Spain.
By Becky Bratu, Staff Writer, NBC News
At least 56 people are dead and 70 injured after a train crashed Wednesday evening near Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, officials said.
There are reports of as many as 100 people wounded and at least 45 dead in a train derailment in northwestern Spain. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
"The scene is shocking, it's Dante-esque," the head of Spain's Galicia region, Alberto Nunez Feijoo,?said in a radio interview, according to Reuters.
More than 20 people were seriously injured, he added.?
Images from the scene showed bodies covered in blankets and towels lying next to toppled and crushed carriages as a plume of smoke billowed from the wreck. Rescuers worked to pull survivors out of broken windows.?
The high-speed train?was traveling between Madrid and Ferrol.
Feijoo said it was too early to say what had caused the derailment.?
"It was going so quickly ... It seems that on a curve the train started to twist, and the wagons piled up one on top of the other," passenger Ricardo Montesco told Cadena Ser radio station, according to Reuters.?
"A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the wagons to get out and we realized the train was burning ... I was in the second wagon and there was fire ... I saw corpses," he added.?
Stringer/Spain / Reuters
Rescue workers pull victims from a train crash near Santiago de Compostela, northwestern Spain, July 24, 2013.
A witness told the Spanish radio station she first heard a loud explosion and then saw the train derail, according to Reuters.
A statement released by Renfe, a?state-owned company that operates freight and passenger trains, read:?"An Alvia train traveling between Madrid and Ferrol has derailed upon entering the station of Santiago de Compostela at 8:41 p.m. (local time). The train was traveling on high-speed tracks carrying a total of 218 passengers in addition to the crew."
A Spanish government spokeswoman said Prime Minister?Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, was due to visit the accident site Thursday morning.
"Rajoy is in an emergency meeting with the deputy prime minister, the interior minister and the public works minister," she told Reuters.
The crash happened on the eve of the city's main festival, which focuses on St. James, one of Jesus's 12 disciples, whose remains are said to rest in the city.?
Santiago de Compostela's tourism board said all the festivities, including Wednesday's traditional High Mass at the centuries-old cathedral, were canceled as the city went into mourning.?
Reuters contributed to this report.?
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