The rail collision in Spain that has so far claimed at least 68 lives, came after a train was ordered to go despite a technical failure that halted all services, the transport minister said on Wednesday.

The crash near Urda in the central region of Castilla-La Mancha is likely to revive questions about rail safety in Spain after another high-speed collision in January killed 46 people.

Transport Minister Oscar Puente said 69 km of track were affected by an outage of the automatic control system, which caused all trains running at that time to stop automatically.

“The decision to resume traffic, while that system had not been restored, belongs to the control centre, and the control centre took the decision to resume traffic in circumstances that, from our point of view, are inexplicable,” Puente said.

A train operated by state company Renfe restarted and travelled 25 km until it collided with a stationary train belonging to private Spanish company Iryo, at a speed that could have reached up to 200 km per hour, Puente added.

“It is clear that, in the control centre, the decision was taken to restart, and then they had more than enough time to verify the error, and they did not fix it,” Puente said.

Collision near Madrid-Seville route

The collision happened at around 08:54 local time near Urda station, between Mora and Orgaz, roughly 140 km south of Madrid on the Madrid-Seville high-speed line.

Emergency services reported that at least two carriages derailed and fell down an embankment. The regional government activated its emergency plan at 09:15.

Castilla-La Mancha president Emiliano García-Page said 68 people died in the crash, with 24 from the Renfe train and 44 from the Iryo train. A further 15 people were in very serious condition and 53 were treated for less severe injuries.

Authorities warned the death toll could still rise while rescuers accessed the most damaged carriages.

Second deadly crash this year

The crash came just nine months after the Adamuz rail disaster in Córdoba province, where a track fracture caused one train to derail and collide with another, killing 46 people. That accident, which occurred in January, was Spain’s worst railway disaster since the Santiago de Compostela derailment in 2013.

Rail traffic on the Madrid-Andalusia high-speed route was suspended following Wednesday’s collision.

The Renfe train was carrying 378 passengers while the Iryo train had 147 people on board at the time of the crash.

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