Commuter train crash in Barcelona

At least 54 people were reported to be injured in a train crash in Barcelona after a commuter train crashed into the platform during the morning rush hour on Friday.

One person was seriously injured, 19 were injured “less seriously” including the driver and 34 were lightly injured at the city’s Francia station, local emergency services said.The train was coming from Sant Vicenc de Calders village in the province of Tarragona.

A spokesperson for the civil protection services said that the overall toll is “48 people affected”, though the condition of about 30 people is not known. The regional train crashed into railway buffers at the end of the platform at about 7.30am local time.

At the time of the incident many passengers were travelling standing up, which increased the number of injured. The cause of the crash was not immediately known. An investigation has been opened, a spokesman for train operators Renfe said.

The streets around the station were closed off to allow emergency vehicles to get through, news radio station Cadena Ser reported. The incident coincided with the start of a national rail strike which forced the cancellation of hundreds of trains.

The incident comes as Spain this week marked the four year anniversary of one of the country’s worst rail disasters in which 80 people died in 2013 near the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela.

The train from Madrid crashed as it hurtled round a sharp bend at 179 kilometres per hour (110 miles per hour) – more than twice the speed limit for that stretch of track – in the village of Angrois.