Two killed after train hits truck

A PASSENGER train crashed into a heavy-duty dump truck in southwestern Spain yesterday, killing two people and injuring eight others, a government official said.

The collision occurred at about 1pm near the town of Carmonita, 56 miles from the border with Portugal, a regional spokeswoman for Spain's Interior Ministry said.

The large truck was supporting work on Spain's bullet train link to Portugal when the three-carriage regional train slammed into it and lifted the truck partially on to its roof, the spokeswoman said.

The subsequent impact caused all the carriages to derail. A young woman aboard the train and the truck driver were killed, and the seriously injured train driver was flown to a hospital in the nearby city of Badajoz, the spokeswoman said

Emergency crews were last night working to clear the wreckage and investigators were trying to establish the reason for the crash.

Bullet trains are scheduled to run from Portugal's capital, Lisbon, to Madrid in under three hours by 2014, despite the swingeing budget cuts imposed by the Spanish government.

High-speed lines will eventually stretch from Portugal's Atlantic coast, through France to Britain and Belgium.