Coach crash fireball kills 18 trapped German tourists

EIGHTEEN people died when they were trapped inside a tourist coach that caught fire after it collided with a lorry on a German motorway yesterday.

Thirty people were injured in the crash which occurred shortly after 7am near Stammbach, 55 miles north-east of Nuremberg, police said.

A party of German pensioners were on their way to Lake Garda in Italy, and most of the victims were aged between 66 and 81. All the dead were believed to be German citizens. The coach driver was among the dead.

The lorry driver, who survived the accident, said no one had been injured in the initial crash, but that the two vehicles caught fire almost immediately with many of the passengers trapped inside. The lorry was packed with beds and pillows which quickly caught fire and fed the inferno.

Alexander Dobrindt, the German transport minister, said after visiting the scene that the heat had been so intense that nothing was left of the bus but metal. “You can imagine what that meant for the people on board,” he said. Chancellor Angela Merkel thanked the emergency services for their response. “Our thoughts are with the families of the victims and we wish all those who were injured a speedy recovery,” she said in a statement.

The incident took place at a notorious accident black spot near the town of Münchberg in Bavaria. The A9, the main Autobahn between Berlin and Munich, runs through the Fichtel Mountains and visibility is often impaired by the hilly landscape, sharp bends and rapid changes of weather.

Ten people died on the A9 in a 121car pile-up in fog in 1990, and 57 were injured in a 182-car incident in snow in 2003. While much of the German Autobahn network has no speed limit, this stretch has limits that are strictly enforced. It is thought the coach driver did not see the slower-moving lorry ahead as it was over the crest of a hill.

About 200 rescue workers were involved in the attempt to save the trapped, and helicopters ferried the injured to hospital.

The passengers were from Lausitz, an impoverished region of the former East Germany, near Dresden.