All 69 victims of last week's deadly high-speed train collision near Urda in central Spain have now been identified, authorities confirmed on Tuesday, November 3. According to Qazinform, citing Xinhua, Spain's Integrated Data Center confirmed that the provisional death toll remains at 69, including 54 Spanish nationals and 15 foreigners, while 29 injured people remain in hospital. The victims, all adults, included 40 men and 29 women. The foreign victims included four Americans, two Australians, two Japanese and one each from Argentina, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Mexico, Portugal and Tunisia, the report said. The Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences of Toledo and Ciudad Real completed the identification process. Of the 69 victims, 56 were identified through fingerprint analysis conducted by the Civil Guard's Criminalistics Service, while the remaining 13 were identified through DNA testing by the National Institute of Toxicology, according to Qazinform. The Guardian's reporting, cited in European coverage of the announcement, likewise confirmed that two Australians were among the final victims identified, closing the identification process that had left families waiting for days. All carriages of the two trains involved — operated by Iryo and Spain's national railway operator Renfe — have now been removed from the tracks, Qazinform reports. The collision, on the Madrid-Seville high-speed line near Urda, about 130 kilometres south of Madrid, was one of Europe's deadliest rail accidents this century. With identification complete, attention now turns to the judicial investigation and to the support package announced by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez for those affected, as well as to the wider questions about rail safety raised by a second deadly high-speed collision in Spain this year.
