PARIS, January 22 (Itar-Tass) — Two Russian tourists, who were injured in a major road accident in France, are ready for a flight back to Russia, a representative of the tourism operator Ertzog in France told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. The Russian citizens were holidaymaking at the French ski resort.
A 10-year-old boy and his mother will be brought back to Russia. “The doctors estimated that their conditions permit them to fly back to the homeland,” representative of the tourism company Mikhail Perfilyev said. He noted that this can take place already on Tuesday, “if the weather permits.”
After their departure for the homeland three Russian tourists, who are undergoing treatment at the hospital in Grenoble, will remain in France. “Two of them are recuperating, the doctors will decide whether they will fly back to Russia at the end of this week,” Perfilyev noted. The condition of one Russian tourist requires a surgery that is scheduled for the next week.
The tourism operator accommodated the relatives at the hotels near the hospital, where the wounded Russian tourists were taken.
The road accident, in which several Russian citizens were wounded, occurred in the Savoie Department in south-eastern France in the morning on January 19. A bus, which was trafficking the tourists from the Alpine ski resort to the Grenoble airport and which belonged to a local logistic company, has got in a road accident on the highway near Chambery over the bad weather. “The driver lost control of the wheel, the bus skidded off the road and capsized on the roadside,” a source in the Savoie Prefecture said.
Forty-three Russian tourists were travelling in the bus. Several Russian tourists, who have got in the road accident, departed by a charter flight from the Grenoble airport to Moscow already on Saturday, January 19. The next group of tourists followed them on January 20.
“The traces of alcohol or drugs were found in the blood of the bus driver,” Russian Honorary Consul in Lyon Philippe Bordier told Itar-Tass on Tuesday. Bordier pledged that he is keeping in constant contact with the French authorities over a dramatic situation with the Russian tourists.