新加坡

ROME - A tour bus filled with Italians returning home after an excursion plunged off a highway into a ravine in southern Italy on Sunday night.self storageIt smashed into several cars that were slowed by heavy traffic before falling off the highway and killing at least 39 people.Flashing signs near Avellino, outside Naples, had warned of slow traffic ahead along a stretch of the A116 autostrada, a major highway crossing southern Italy, before the crash occurred, said highway officials, speaking on state radio early yesterday.They said the bus driver, for reasons not yet determined, appeared to have lost control of his vehicle.Hours after the crash, firefighters said that they had extracted 37 bodies.Most of the dead were found inside the mangled bus, which lay on its side, while a few of the victims were pulled out from underneath the wreckage, state radio and the Italian news agency Ansa reported. Two other victims died in hospital.The radio report said 10 people were hospitalised with injuries.Rescuers wielding electric saws cut through twisted metal to迷你倉better probe the interior of the bus, stopping occasionally in silence to listen for any cries for help, even as the bodies were put into coffins to be taken to a morgue.It was the second transport disaster to hit southern Europe in the space of five days.Seventy-nine people were killed when a high-speed train derailed in the Spanish pilgrimage town of Santiago de Compostela last Wednesday.Reports said as many as 49 people had been on board the bus when it ripped through a guard rail after slamming into several cars, then plunged some 30m off the highway and into a ravine near a wooded area.In its plunge, the bus tore away whole sections of concrete barriers as well as guard rail. The concrete lay in large chunks in a clearing in a wooded area where the bus landed.State radio quoted Avellino police as saying that the bus driver was among the dead.Occupants of cars which were hit by the bus stood on the highway near their vehicles.It was not immediately known if anyone in those cars had been injured.ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE文件倉