World News 11-08-2004 Five Brit Tourists Die In Bus Crash who: Emergency services chief Gerhard Huber what: Says five dead in bus crash were all British where: Salzburg, Austria when: Yesterday snippet: "At least five people were killed yesterday when a coach packed with British holiday-makers plunged down the side of a mountain," says The Sun. Reporter Steve Kennedy says "the bus plummeted 160ft" - a figure considerably higher than most other newspaper estimates - "before landing on its roof in a field". "Five people died and all five people were British", says Gerhard Huber, head of Salzburg`s emergency services, quoted by the BBC. The accident happened on a steep Alpine road at 4.30pm, local time, near the village of Bad Dürrnberg, 10km south of Salzburg, as passengers were on an excursion to Berchtesgaden. Newspaper reports in, for example, The Telegraph, say a car driven by a woman tried to overtake the coach and forced it to swerve because a minibus was coming the other way. But there have been reports that the coach was in fact hit by a minibus and the BBC says "unconfirmed reports suggested the coach got into difficulty as it tried to overtake another vehicle". 34 people were injured, 30 of them seriously, says The Independent. "A major rescue operation was launched with nine helicopters sent to the scene of the accident. An hour after the crash, all the survivors had been pulled from the wreckage, some through the shattered coach windows." An incident room hotline has been set up for the public to call for information: 020 8780 6600. [... more]

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