THREE DIE IN 28FT BRIDGE FALL HORROR

THREE British tourists including a child died when their car fell 28ft off a bridge.

The driver and three other family members were last night fighting for life following yesterday morning’s horror crash in Iceland.

Guide Adolf Erlingsson told how he tried to help police as they struggled to free passengers from the Toyota Land Cruiser, which was “totally destroyed”.

Authorities said the seven family members were two couples in their 30s – two brothers and their wives – an eightyear-old girl, a nine-year-old boy and a young child, described as an infant.

The two wives and young child were killed, while the brothers and two other youngsters were critically injured.

Mr Erlingsson, a local tour guide, said: “It was a horrible sight to come there and see the wreckage and people there. We struggled getting everyone out.”

It is understood the family was on a special holiday over the Christmas and New Year period. They were travelling on the national Route 1 ring road near Skeidararsandur, a vast sand plain from where glaciers can be viewed, in the south of the country.

The group’s Land Cruiser careered through a railing on the single-lane bridge over the Nupsvotn river and crashed to a bank below, at around 9.30am. Mr Erlingsson said: “Somehow, the driver must have lost control of the car and it just went through the railing and crashed down on to the bank.

“It’s kind of sandy, there’s no rivers, so it wasn’t submerged in water. It just landed there on a sandy bottom and flipped over and was totally destroyed.

“The car was totally smashed up after flying off the bridge and plunging down.”

Describing rescue efforts, he said: “When I arrived, four had been retrieved from the vehicle, one was dead and three still stuck in the car, two of them probably dead.

“It was horrible. The car seemed to have

THE Iceland Ring Road, or Route 1, is a popular trip for tourists which takes in spectacular snow-capped volcanoes, 200ft-high waterfalls and vast tracts of bizarre-looking moss-covered lava.Completed in 1974, the 828-mile highway circles the nation and is mainly two lane, tarmac and in good condition, though with patches of loose gravel.However, the many bridges – which usually go across dry river beds which flood with seasonal glacial meltwater – are

ONE LANE Bridge that tourists’ Land Cruiser plunged off

AIRLIFT Passengers were flown to hospital in Reykjavik

BARRIER The section, circled, car went through