By Teresa Medrano and Miguel Vidal
SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA, Spain (Reuters) - Police put the driver of a Spanish train under investigation on Thursday after at least 78 people died when it hit a sharp bend at speed, derailed and caught fire near the pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela, in one of Europe's worst rail disasters.
Dramatic video footage from a security camera outside the northwestern city showed the train, with 247 people on board, careering into a wall at the side of the track as carriages jack-knifed and the engine overturned.
One local official described the aftermath of the crash, on the eve of one of Europe's biggest Christian festivals in the ancient city, as like a scene from hell, with bodies strewn next to the tracks.
"We heard a massive noise and we went down the tracks. I helped get a few injured and bodies out of the train. I went into one of the cars but I'd rather not tell you what I saw there," Ricardo Martinez, a 47-year old baker from Santiago de Compostela, told Reuters.
The train driver was under formal police investigation, a spokeswoman for Galicia's Supreme Court told Reuters, without naming him. The train had two drivers and one was in hospital, the Galicia government said.
It was not immediately clear which driver was under investigation or in hospital. The train was operated by state-owned company Renfe.
Newspaper accounts cited witnesses as saying one driver, Francisco Jose Garzon, who had helped rescue victims, shouted into a phone: "I've derailed! What do I do?".
El Pais newspaper said one of the drivers told the railway station by radio after being trapped in his cabin that the train entered the bend at 190 kilometers per hour (120 mph), twice the permitted speed.
"We're only human! We're only human!" he told the station, the newspaper said, citing sources close to the investigation. "I hope there are no dead, because this will fall on my conscience."
Investigators were trying to urgently establish why the train was going so fast and why failsafe security devices to keep speed within permitted limits had not worked.
Bodies covered in blankets lay strewn around the train track next to overturned carriages after the impact as flames and smoke billowed from the wreckage and bloodied passengers staggered away.
