Six killed as French train crashes into school bus

A train slammed into a bus carrying schoolchildren at a railway crossing in the French Alps today, killing six children and injuring 30 people, regional officials said.

The bus was carrying 50 students of middle school age, five adults and a driver on a field trip to the shores of Lake Geneva, according to the gendarmes service in the Haute-Savoie region.

The six dead were all children who had been on the bus, they said. Three of the 30 injured were in serious condition.

The accident occurred near the town of Allinges, near the Swiss border.

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, junior minister for transport Dominique Bussereau and the head of the SNCF national railway were heading to the site.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy paid a tribute to the victims during a speech on education in the presidential palace.