Twelve Ecuadorian immigrants died early Wednesday when a van, which local police said was overloaded with people, was hit by a train on an automatic level crossing in southeastern Spain.
The van, which was carrying 14 people when it was crushed, was only designed to carry eight people, police said.
The impact derailed all three cars of the train and pushed the van more than 200 meters (yards) down the line, crushing it. Police said the violence of the impact made identifying the dead difficult.
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 am (0630 GMT) 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 kilometers (one mile) outside the town at Molino de los Pasuales.
The Lorca region is a market-gardening area that employs a large number of immigrants, many of them from Ecuador -- LORCA (AFP)
