12 dead in bus crash

Twelve people died and dozens more were injured when a German bus en route to Paris swerved off the highway at the Belgian-French border early today and burst into flames.

Authorities said the bus scraped against a concrete crash barrier causing a fire in the rear which then spread through the entire bus, leaving nothing but a blackened skeleton.

Five of the 37 injured were detained in hospital, two of them with serious burns, officials said. The others were treated for minor burns, cuts and bruises at hospitals around Hensies, a small town on the French border off the E19 highway.

The bus had departed for Paris on Friday afternoon from Munich, Germany, and was to return on Monday, said the bus company owner, Rainer Polster.

Most of the victims were college students who were trapped inside as the bus was engulfed by fire. They included Germans and several other nationalities, among them one American, one Croatian and “some” from Mongolia.

Belgian police notified the Russian Embassy in Brussels that as many as eight of the dead were Russian citizens, according to an embassy spokesman, who added that their identities had not been confirmed. The head of the Russian consular section was en route to the scene.

German Transport Minister Manfred Stolpe was also planning to visit the crash site and meet survivors, his spokesman said in Berlin.

Officials said the bus driver was among the dead, and his relief driver was among the 37 injured.

Rainbow Tours, which organised the trip, said there did not appear to be any technical problems with the bus, which was only one and a half years old. The Hamburg, Germany-based operator quoted witnesses as saying the driver lost control ”from causes still unknown” and hit a concrete wall dividing the highway.

“The bus skidded a few farther and went up in flames,” it said in a statement.

Police said they were not ruling out the possibility that the driver had fallen asleep.

Witnesses told the Belgian news agency Belga that the second driver managed to get out of the bus through a window after the crash and open the rear door, enabling many of the survivors to escape.

Belgian Prince Philip and Interior Minister Patrick Dewael also visited the site Saturday.