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Re­gion­al Span­ish of­fi­cials said Mon­day that at least 40 peo­ple are con­firmed dead in a high-speed rail col­li­sion the pre­vi­ous night in the coun­try’s south when the tail end of a train jumped the track, caus­ing an­oth­er train speed­ing past in the op­po­site di­rec­tion to de­rail.

Juan­ma Moreno, the pres­i­dent of An­dalu­sia, the south­ern Span­ish re­gion where the ac­ci­dent hap­pened, con­firmed the new death toll in an af­ter­noon press con­fer­ence. Ef­forts to re­cov­er the bod­ies from the two wrecked train cars con­tin­ued, he added.

The im­pact tossed the sec­ond train’s lead car­riages off the track, send­ing them plum­met­ing down a 4-me­ter (13-foot) slope. Some bod­ies were found hun­dreds of me­ters (feet) from the crash site, Moreno said ear­li­er in the day, de­scrib­ing the wreck­age as a “mass of twist­ed met­al” with bod­ies like­ly still to be found in­side.