Twenty-eight Belgian and Dutch tourists, including 22 children, have been killed in a coach crash in a Swiss motorway tunnel.
The coach was carrying a group of 55 people, mostly schoolchildren, who were heading home after a skiing holiday in the resort of Val d’Anniviers.
Twenty-four children were injured. Some are in a serious condition in hospital.
Officials says the coach was travelling through a motorway tunnel in the Swiss canton of Valais, when it crashed head-on into a wall. Both of the drivers were killed.
The coach was one of three travelling together, heading back to the villages of Lommel and Heverlee in the Flanders region of Belgium. The other two have returned home.
Nine of the children are from the Netherlands.
Belgium’s Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo is heading to Switzerland and two planes are being laid on to fly the relatives of the victims to the region.
The crash was one of the worst in Switzerland since 1982 when 39 German tourists were killed on a railway crossing after a train hit their a bus.
The coach was carrying a group of 55 people, mostly schoolchildren, who were heading home after a skiing holiday in the resort of Val d’Anniviers.
Twenty-four children were injured. Some are in a serious condition in hospital.
Officials says the coach was travelling through a motorway tunnel in the Swiss canton of Valais, when it crashed head-on into a wall. Both of the drivers were killed.
The coach was one of three travelling together, heading back to the villages of Lommel and Heverlee in the Flanders region of Belgium. The other two have returned home.
Nine of the children are from the Netherlands.
Belgium’s Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo is heading to Switzerland and two planes are being laid on to fly the relatives of the victims to the region.
The crash was one of the worst in Switzerland since 1982 when 39 German tourists were killed on a railway crossing after a train hit their a bus.
