Blast survivors describe horror inside station

Commuters caught up in the Madrid blasts described horrific scenes.

The morning rush hour in the Spanish capital came to a standstill as emergency services dealt with the dead and injured.

Civil servant Juani Fernandez, 50, was on the platform at Atocha station when the blasts happened.

"I saw many things explode in the air, I don't know, it was horrible," he told the Associated Press news agency.

"People started to scream and run, some bumping into each other, and as we ran there was another explosion."

Other witnesses told Spanish National Radio that they saw people lying on the ground and train cars destroyed.

Travellers at Santa Eugenia station described how people were thrown, or threw themselves, to the floor as the blasts happened.

Student Isabel Vega, still visibly shaken by the experience, said many students lived on the outskirts and used the trains to get into the capital.

"You could hear people screaming, on the platform. There were dead and injured, people were running covered in blood," she said.

Francisco Torres, from Madrid, told BBC News Online that he was travelling in a train about 50m from one of the blasts at Atocha station and could feel the carriage shake.

"People got off quickly but I still feel we all kept calm. It was only one minute later that two more bombs exploded in rapid succession.

"It was at this point that people rushed out of the station. People crying. It was shocking."

A woman who lives near the El Pozo station on the line leading to Atocha said: "The scene I am seeing is hellish. I can see people inside the remains of the train."