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Italy: at least 24 reported dead in bus crash Italy: at least 37 reported dead in bus crash
(about 1 hour later)
A bus carrying pilgrims has plunged off a highway into a ravine in southern Italy, killing at least seven people, including the driver, according to police. Rescuers said at least 24 had died. At least 37 people died and many others were injured when a coach carrying a group of tourists through southern Italy careered off a viaduct, crashed into several vehicles and then plunged down a steep slope.
The Italian news agency Ansa quoted its photographer Cesare Abbate at the scene in a rural area near Avellino as saying he saw some 30 bodies covered by sheets near the bus after the crash on Sunday night. As emergency workers contended with the dark and highly precarious terrain to try to pull bodies from the wreckage, firefighters said most of the bodies had been found inside the coach and a few more beneath the vehicle. Eleven people – including three children – had been injured and taken to hospitals in the surrounding area, the Ansa news agency reported.
Highway police told state radio that the bus slammed into several cars which had slowed for heavy traffic before plunging off the highway and falling dozens of metres into the ravine. "The situation is critical. Our men are working to save as many lives as possible," fire chief Pellegrino Iandolo told Sky TG24 television late on Sunday night.
The coach's passengers had reportedly been returning from a tour of pilgrimage sites in the south of Italy to Giugliano in Campania, a town near Naples, when their vehicle skidded off a stretch of the A16 motorway between Monteforte Irpino and Baiano at around 8.30pm.
Reports said it hit several cars which had slowed for heavy traffic and then plunged 25m-30m into undergrowth below the viaduct. There was no obvious cause of the crash, but Ansa reported unnamed sources saying police believed there may have been a problem with the coach's braking mechanism. Initial estimates said there were up to 49 people on board at the time of the accident.
Part of the motorway, which leads from the Puglian city of Bari to Naples in the region of Campania, was subsequently closed to traffic.
Television images showed a number of smashed vehicles on the flyover, bodies lying beside the road and the twisted wreckage of the coach itself lying dozens of metres below the roadside in the undergrowth.
Searches were continuing not only for passengers stuck inside the coach, but also for those who may have been thrown from the vehicle into the surrounding undergrowth, firefighters said. The injured were being taken to hospitals in the nearby towns of Avellino, Nola and Salerno, Ansa reported.
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