Italian authorities looking into Venice tourist bus crash that killed 21

Flags flying at half-mast after 'apocalyptic' incident

Venice bus crash scene
According to reports, those who died included four or five Ukrainians, a German tourist and an Italian driver.
(Image credit: Stefano Mazzola/Getty Images)

Authorities in Italy are investigating what caused a bus crash near Venice in which 21 people died, including several children.

The "horrific" incident saw the coach, which was carrying foreign tourists returning from a day trip to Venice, fall 30 metres from an overpass and catch fire, said Yahoo News.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The passengers and driver "found themselves surrounded by flames", said Mauro Luongo, commander of the Venice firefighters team. He added that "the scene we found was terrible" and "it took about one hour to extract some of the bodies", reported AP.

According to reports, those who died included four or five Ukrainians, a German tourist and an Italian driver. Emergency services said a baby and a 12-year-old were killed. Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said a "huge tragedy" had taken place and described an "apocalyptic scene". Flags are flying at half-mast over Venice today, reported The Local.

Although the cause of the accident is "unclear", said Reuters, a city councillor in Venice said one line of enquiry was that the driver, a 40-year-old Italian who was among those killed, had been taken ill before the crash. The councillor added that the death toll could rise because several of those hurt were in a critical condition.

Italy has "suffered a number of deadly bus crashes in recent years", noted Reuters. In 2017, 16 people on board a bus carrying Hungarian students died in an accident near the northern city of Verona, and 40 people died in 2013 when a bus went off a viaduct in southern Italy.

Explore More

 
Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.