Twelve Ecuadorian immigrants died yesterday when a van, which local police said was overloaded with people, was hit by a train on an automatic level crossing in south-eastern Spain.
The van, which was carrying 14 people when it was crushed, was only designed to carry eight, police said.
The two other occupants of the vehicle, both also Ecuadorian farm workers, were injured, as was one passenger in the train. The driver, who was said to have ignored a signal warning of the approaching train, was very seriously injured while an Ecuadorian girl aged 13 was also slightly hurt, police said.
A 76-year-old woman passenger in the train was slightly injured, said police officials in Murcia, the provincial capital. The crash occurred in near-darkness shortly after 7:30 a.m. close to the town of Lorca in Murcia province.
A spokesman for the town authorities in Lorca said the driver of the van had failed to respect a warning signal at the unmanned crossing, located two kilometres outside the town at Molino de los Pasuales.
The Lorca region is a market-gardening area that employs a large number of immigrants. Rescue workers said identifying the bodies will be difficult because many were torn to pieces, the news agency Efe said. Psychologists went to the accident site to try to help mourning relatives.
The Ecuadorian consul in the Murcia district, Mr Juan Bastidas, urged local Spaniards to donate money to help repatriate the bodies.