Urda, autopsies completed: 69 victims, 36 already identified

Three days after the collision between two high-speed trains near Urda, in the province of Toledo, the Institute of Legal Medicine of Toledo completed on October 31 the autopsies on the 69 people who died in the accident, according to Cadena SER and El País. This is a story the newspaper had not yet reported in this edition: the events, followed in recent days, now enter a different phase, that of identifying the victims.

Of the 69 people who died, 36 have been identified and in 27 cases the identity has already been communicated to the families. The president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, stated that no other intact bodies were found in the wreckage of the train, but that partial human remains still to be identified were recovered.

El País provides a more detailed picture of the breakdown of the toll: 68 complete bodies, one person who died in hospital after the accident, and 31 bags containing partial remains intended for identification examinations. The sum of the complete bodies and the hospital death matches the total of 69 victims reported by the authorities.

On the front of the injured, El País reports that as of October 30, 39 patients were still hospitalized in Castilla-La Mancha: 17 in intensive care and 22 in general wards. This figure, dating from the day before the completion of the autopsies, has not been updated in the sources consulted for October 31.

The identification chain described by the two Spanish outlets shows forensic work carried out rapidly relative to the scale of the event: just three days to complete examinations on nearly seventy bodies, some of them severely damaged, to the point of requiring the use of partial remains to complete identification. The process of notifying families, for now, covers less than half of the confirmed victims.

The toll of 69 dead remains, at present, the most recent official figure on the Urda rail accident; the identification of the remaining victims and the recognition of the partial remains reported by El País will continue in the coming days.