More than a dozen people died Monday after a tour bus crashed and burned on a freeway in eastern Germany, authorities said.
July 3 (UPI) — More than a dozen people died Monday after a tour bus crashed and burned on a freeway in eastern Germany, authorities said.
Eighteen people were killed in the crash and 30 others were hurt near Bayreuth, Bavarian police said in a news release. Some were seriously injured.
The 18 dead were initially listed as missing amid the wreckage. The tour bus carried 46 passengers and two drivers — all German citizens.
“These are women and men between the ages of 66 and 81 years, ” Oberfranken police said. “Specialists in legal medicine and the Federal Criminal Police Office take over the identification of the dead, among whom is the driver of the bus. The [other] driver of the truck remained physically uninjured.”
The bus was traveling on the A9 highway from Lausitz to Italy’s Lake Garda, when it hit a truck, which caught fire, Sky News reported. Bayreuth is about 125 miles due north of Munich.
The A9, the main traffic corridor between Berlin and Munich, was closed in both directions as firefighters and rescue workers attended to the crash.
