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Twenty-eight killed in traffic accident in Switzerland

Late on Tuesday a bus running in the direction of Sion at full speed crashed into a wall of a car tunnel not far from Sierre
Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS
Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

GENEVA, March 14 (Itar-Tass) — Twenty-eight people, including 22 children, have been killed in a traffic accident in the southwest of Switzerland, the administration of the Valais conton said Wednesday.

Late on Tuesday a bus running in the direction of Sion at full speed crashed into a wall of a car tunnel not far from Sierre. Twenty-eight out of 52 people on board the bus, including 22 children, were killed; twenty four were injured.

Media reports said all the victims killed in the accident were Belgians from the Flemish region in the north of Switzerland. They were returning home from vacation they spent at a ski resort in Valais. Both bus drivers were reported killed.

The victims injured in the accident were sent to four hospitals in Valais and medical clinics in Lausanne and Bern. Relatives of the victims killed in the accident are to arrive on the scene of the accident accompanied by psychologists, the local media said.

No other vehicles were damaged in the accident. Onlookers said the bus first crashed into the left side of the tunnel and then bounced right and crashed into its right wall before it finally broke near a spare exit from the underground tunnel.