Driver killed and dozens injured in train derailment near Barcelona

A commuter train derailed on Tuesday after a containment wall fell on the track due to heavy rain near the Spanish city of Barcelona, killing the driver and seriously injuring passengers, a fire brigade official said.

Claudi Gallardo, inspector at the Catalonia regional fire department, said in televised comments from the site of the crash that 37 people had been injured, four of them seriously, and the driver had died. He said all passengers had been removed from the train.

Twenty ambulances were dispatched to the site in Gelida on the outskirts of Barcelona, around 35 kilometres from the city, along with 38 firefighter units, emergency services authorities said.

The suburban train derailment occurred in an area long plagued by underfunded rail services and frequent incidents.

The accident occurred just two days after a high-speed train collision and derailment near Adamuz in the southern Córdoba province that killed 42 people - one of Europe's deadliest train crashes. Spain's rail operator Adif has ordered trains on the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line to limit their speed over concerns about the track's condition. 

The country remains in shock after the first-ever fatal accident on the country's extensive high-speed rail network, which occurred on Sunday evening about 360 km (223 miles) south of Madrid.

• Spain declares three days of mourning after deadly high-speed train crash

In a separate incident on Tuesday night, traffic between Blanes and Maçanet-Massanes south of the city of Girona also part of the Barcelona commuter rail network was interrupted "due to a train axle coming off the track", Spanish rail operator Adif said in a statement on X.

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