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Updated at 8.30am
RESCUE SERVICES IN southern Italy say at least 38 people were killed after a coach carrying pilgrims, including some children, plunged off a motorway flyover.
Another 11 people were injured, they added, in what is already one of the worst coach accidents in Europe in recent years.
Rescue workers said they had pulled 33 bodies from the wreckage after Sunday evening’s crash near the town of Avellino in the Campania region.
They found the bodies of another three people underneath the coach. They had been thrown from the vehicle as it plunged 30 metres down a slope.
Photographers at the scene described how fire crews raced to find any remaining survivors, as the victims were laid out under white sheets along the roadside.
“Looking down from the overpass, the scene of the tragedy: some 30 bodies covered by white sheets, lined up along the roadside,” said Cesare Abbate of Italy’s ANSA news agency, before the toll was revised upwards.
An AFP photographer at the scene described rescue workers searching the crash site early Monday under arc-lights set up around the coach, which lay on its side in an inaccessible area at the bottom of the slope.
From time to time, rescue workers called for “a moment of silence” to listen for signs of life from the wreckage, he said.
The accident happened on a flyover on the A16 highway between Naples and Bari, near Avellino in the Monteforte Irpino district about 50 kilometres east of Naples.
The coach passengers had been returning to Naples following a pilgrimage to Pietrelcina, the birthplace of Saint Pio, an Italian priest canonised in 2002 who is highly venerated in southern Italy.
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs told TheJournal.ie there were no indications of any Irish citizens injured or killed in the crash.
The coach had been travelling at high speed when it crashed on the busy dual carriageway. Witnesses said it looked as if the coach might have had brake problems.
It hit several cars before plunging off the flyover and there were reports that some of those in the seven or eight cars caught up in the chaos had also been injured.
Italian media reports said the place where the accident happened was at a particularly dangerous downward slope on the road that is already an accident black spot.
It was not yet exactly clear how many were on the coach, but local media reported that about 50 people were on board, many of them children.
The emergency services had rushed three badly injured children, four women and two men to hospitals in Avellino and nearby Naples, media reports said.
(Image: Gregorio Borgia/AP/Press Association Images)
Police would not put a definitive number on those killed in the accident.
“Our priority now is to free the wounded,” a spokesman told AFP.
“The situation is critical,” head fireman Pellegrino Iandolo told SKY TG24 television. “Our men are working to save as many lives as possible.”
Officials at the site said the driver of the coach was among the victims.
The Naples-Bari highway had been closed to traffic, the police said.
The last major coach accident in Europe was in March 2012 in Switzerland, when a coach carrying Belgian schoolchildren home from a skiing holiday crashed killing 28 people, including 22 children.
(Youtube: AFP)
- additional reporting by AFP
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These aren’t just closures. These are M&S closures.
WTFOCK. Where can I get my organic tree ripened mango now??? #disaster
@kevinhunt101:
Plant your own perhaps !?!
@Michael Kavanagh: You’d have some job ripening a mango in Irish weather!
Won’t be the last either. Rents too high ecommerce winning..
@James O’Brien:
A friend who manages a retail store for a large group that have an online shop as well maintains her shop is now just for trying the clothes on before buying them online.
Right, except that people don’t mind trying on and don’t want to wait in for deliveries some time today maybe. Ideally M&S would have Click & collect.
@P.J. Nolan:
True – but fitting is important.
The daughter buys clothes and shoes online and is forever complaining that some sizes are either over or under expectation.
@Fiona Fitzgerald: M&S do have click and collect. Maybe not in Ireland, though.
Maybe sell clothes that people want to buy , their selection does appeal to an older demographic.
Their food’s tasty, I sometimes treat myself to the odd meal. And their leg lengths are accurate, credit where due.
@Alchemy: Piffle. I’m in that demographic and I love their clothes.
Mystery how they are still open in Drogheda
Doesn’t bode well for them opening that Limerick store…
@Rochelle: Keep in mind the mark-up they have on the products sold in Irish shops. They more than cover currency movements – and still manage to compete…
If there is a hard border in Ireland thenorth will see the first M&S to close in places like Enniskillen and a few other multi stores too.
Brexit strikes again…!!
Turnover down due to reduced spending power , due to higher inflation due to 20% drop in the value of Sterling since June 20i16 .
Tesco Direct (the non-food online outlet) also shutting up virtual shop.
By 2020 or 2022?
have your say