High-speed trains to Spain's Andalusia resume after power cable failure

MADRID (Reuters) - High-speed train traffic between Madrid and the southern Spanish region of Andalusia resumed on Tuesday, after a power cable failure left passengers stranded in train carriages and at stations overnight, railway infrastructure operator ADIF said.

Around 20 trains were blocked on the tracks or unable to depart on Monday evening, with approximately 10 more cancelled on Tuesday morning in Madrid and southern Spanish cities including Seville, where global leaders are attending a United Nations conference on development financing.

Traffic between the towns of Yeles and La Sagra, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Madrid, was suspended at 8:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) when an overhead cable malfunctioned, a spokesperson for the state-owned ADIF said.

The cause of the malfunction was unknown, he said, and ADIF had postponed the resumption of service four times before launching the first train around 11:00 a.m. (0900 GMT). The backlog of passengers would slowly reduce during the day, it said.

ADIF had called on regional emergency services to evacuate stranded passengers, some of whom spent hours stuck inside the trains in blistering heat.

At least one train full of passengers remained on the tracks the entire night, the spokesperson said.

The high-speed network has rapidly expanded in Spain as part of a government push to decarbonise public transport.

The network connects almost all the country's big cities but is vulnerable to cable incidents as it crosses large swathes of scarcely populated areas.

A copper cable theft paralysed the same line for more than 12 hours in early May.

(Reporting by Inti Landauro; Editing by Saad Sayeed and Alex Richardson)