Eight dead in southern Poland bus crash

Eight dead in southern Poland bus crash

2012-03-29 20:20:34 GMT+7 (ICT)

WARSAW, POLAND (BNO NEWS) -- Eight people were killed on late Wednesday evening when a minibus carrying miners collided head-on with a truck in southern Poland, police said on Thursday. Ten others were injured.

The accident happened at around 9:30 p.m. local time when the Mercedes Sprinter minibus and truck, which was loaded with timber, collided on a straight stretch of road on Expressway S69 near Żywiec, a town in the province of Silesian which borders the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

A police spokesperson said seven people died at the scene of the accident while eleven others were rushed to hospitals in Żywiec, Sosnowiec and Bielsko-Biala. "One of the seriously wounded men died in the hospital in Żywiec," the Żywiec government said in a statement, raising the death toll to eight.

The collision caused the truck, and a trailer attached to the vehicle, to strike an overpass barrier before it fell into the bed of a stream. The truck driver, identified as a 44-year-old man, survived the accident and suffered minor injuries. He had not been drinking, police said.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known, but investigators said the truck is believed to have veered on to the wrong side of the road before colliding with the minibus, which was carrying workers from the Myslowice-Merry coal mine.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2012-03-29