Spain Deadliest train crash that killed 77, Spain rules out terrorism

Spanish investigators were trying to determine Thursday why a passenger train jumped the tracks and sent eight cars crashing into each other just before arriving in this northwestern shrine city on the eve of a major Christian religious festival, killing at least 77 people and injuring more than 140.

Seventy-three people were found dead at the scene of the accident and four died in hospitals, said Maria Pardo Rios, spokeswoman for the Galicia region's main court. At least 141 people were injured — some of them critically — after the eight-carriage train carrying 218 passengers derailed about an hour before sunset Wednesday night.

Authorities did not identify any possible causes of the accident on a pronounced curve just outside Santiago de Compostela, but a spokeswoman with Spain's Interior Ministry said Thursday that the possibility that the derailment was caused by a terrorist attack had been ruled out. She spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ministry policy.

It was Spain's deadliest train accident since 1972, when a train collided with a bus in southwestern Spain, killing 86 people and injuring 112. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, went to the crash scene on Thursday. Officials in the city cancelled ceremonies for its annual religious festival that attracts tens of thousands of Christians from around the world.
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