Name: What is known so far about how this crash happened? | DW News
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First is Spain, where the Interior Ministry says at least 39 people have been killed and dozens more injured after the collision of two high speed trains.

The accident happened overnight in the southern region of Andalusia.

Basic passive voice

The trains were carrying hundreds of people and many were trapped inside the wreckage.

The cause of the accident is under investigation.

The wreckage of Sunday's crash lies strewn across the tracks as the death toll from the country's worst rail disaster in over a decade climbs.

A grueling rescue operation continued throughout the night after the high speed train derailed, colliding with an oncoming service.

What happened was that the long distance train derailed the Irio 6189 train which was traveling between Malaga and Puerto de Atoche.

It landed on the Adjoin adjacent track where another long distance train was traveling from Puerto de Atoche to Huelva and it also derailed.

In addition, part of one of the trains fell down a 4 meter embankment.

Around 400 passengers and staff were traveling on the two trains.

Survivors described the moment of the collision.

The first thing we noticed was a sudden braking, but we remained in place.

We didn't have time to react when in a fraction of a second, another much stronger impact came, which caused suitcases, clothes and people to be scattered all over the carriage.

We were very lucky because the scene was absolutely terrifying.

The overhead lines had fallen, cables were everywhere.

The train was traveling from Malaga to Madrid when it came off the tracks and collided with a train en route from Madrid to Huelva.

The accident happened in a remote area of southern Spain, close to Adamuz.

Spain's Transport Minister described the incident as extremely strange.

And the train's operator confirmed on Monday morning that the derailed vehicle underwent an inspection just days ago.

Our correspondent, Jan Philipp Scholz is close to the crash site on the outskirts of Adamut in southern Spain.

Philip, what's happening there right now?

Well, journalists are not allowed to access directly the site of the accident, but we are very close.

Here in Adamus, they set up an emergency center and I can see a lot of heavy machinery passing by the whole time.

It's an emergency center for families, but also for the press.

There is a lot of solidarity in the whole region here and there are special programs on local radio informing affected people what they can do.

There is also centers where family members can leave DNA samples to help identify victims.

What eyewitnesses tell us is completely horrifying.

Some people were thrown out of the windows hundreds of meters.

But since we are just a few kilometers away from the site of the accident, we get a lot of information here, but

of course we haven't been able to reach the site of the accident yet.

What's known so far, Jan Philipp, about how this crash happened?

Well, what we know is that two trains traveling in opposite directions derailed and crashed and there were several hundred people on board of both trains.

The people have been treated all around the region, most of them in the University Hospital of Cordoba.

It's the next bigger city, close to here.

But it will still probably take hours, if not days until we have a clear picture of the whole scene.

How safe is Spain's high speed rail network?

Generally it's considered to be quite safe.

The high speed network is one of the biggest prides of the country.

You can travel from almost all regions of Spain to Madrid in 2, 3, 4 hours.

But there are some reports emerging now that the condition of some tracks here in the area have been under scrutiny for a while.

Some reports were published some months ago about the bad stuff state of some tracks.

But this is just information we are receiving now.

Generally it's considered safe to travel by train here in Spain.

I think the last big accident was in Santiago de Compostela in the north of the country 13 years ago.

Since then there have been some small accidents, but no major accident like this one right now.

That was our correspondent, Jan Philip Schultz.