Two police among six killed as truck rams into Spanish checkpoint

A freight truck ploughed into a police checkpoint in southern Spain early on Tuesday, killing six people including two officers, the regional government said.

Three other people were injured in the accident, which happened at around 4:30 a.m. (0330 GMT) on a highway near the town of Los Palacios in the province of Seville, the government of Andalusia said in a statement.

All three injured belong to the Civil Guards police force, the force said in a message on X, formerly Twitter.

“I would like to send all my love and solidarity to the families of the people who died, two of them police officers, in a road check,” Prime Minster Pedro Sanchez wrote on X, formerly Twitter, adding he wished a “speedy recovery for the injured in this tragic accident.”

Spanish media said the officers who were run over by the truck were carrying out routine checks against drug trafficking. The driver of the truck has been detained and tested negative for drugs and alcohol, the reports said.

A representative of the central government in the province of Seville, Francisco Toscano, told news radio Cadena Ser that the driver appears to have been “distracted” and accidentally hit the police checkpoint.

The accident comes after two Civil Guards were killed in February after being hit by a drug traffickers’ boat during a chase in the harbor at Barbate, near the major southern port of Cadiz, in Andalusia.