Croatia

At least 14 killed in Croatian bus crash

Sunday 07 September 2008

Fourteen people died and a further 22 were hospitalised when a bus carrying Slovakian tourists crashed on Sunday on the main Croatian highway connecting the capital Zagreb and the Adriatic city of Split, state radio reported.

Fourteen Slovak tourists were killed and 22 hospitalised in a horrific coach crash on a Croatian motorway, one of the worst on record in this former Yugoslav republic which relies heavily on tourism.
  
"The toll has risen. Now we are talking about 14 dead; the latest victim died in the hospital at Gospic from injuries sustained in the crash," police spokeswoman Kristina Maodus said.
  
"All of the victims are of Slovakian nationality, mostly elderly," Maodus added, specifying that there were no children among the dead.
  
She said 22 of the injured people on board were taken to hospital -- 19 in nearby Gospic and three to Zagreb.
  
Croatian Health Minister Darko Milinovic rushed to the scene, media reports said, while Slovak Foreign Minister Jan Kubis went to the coastal city of Zadar in a chartered aircraft to fly survivors back home.
  
"Sadly, this is the biggest tragedy in the history of independent Slovakia," Kubis said.
  
A doctor by training, Milinovic helped treat victims personally -- but later warned that the most critically injured may not pull through.
  
"All of the emergency services made it quickly to the scene, which allowed us to save numerous lives," he told national radio.
  
"I hope the toll will stay where it is, but some of the patients are in such a (bad) condition, it's difficult to predict."
  
A helicopter had been sent to airlift the wounded. Another 13 who escaped without serious injury are being comforted elsewhere.
  
Hours after the accident, emergency services were still working to cut free some of the injured passengers from the twisted wreckage, local prosecutor Pavo Rukavina said on national radio.
  
"It is horrific. They are trapped, they are crying out in pain," Rukavina had said, adding that the cause of the accident remained unknown.
  
Television pictures showed the coach's crushed chassis, folded against a concrete structure.
  
"Two people died as we were trying to give them the kiss of life," said Marija Ilievski, Gospic hospital director.
  
Gospic surgeon Branko Gakovic said of the 17 remaining, ten are seriously wounded.
  
The crash happened around 6 a.m. (0400 GMT) near Zir on the motorway along Croatia's Adriatic coast linking the capital Zagreb and the port of Split.
  
The coach, which had Slovak number plates, had about 50 people on board, police said, including two drivers.
  
Interior Minister Berlislav Roncevic also rushed to the scene.
  
According to the website of the Jutarnji List newspaper, the coach was taking a group of tourists from the town of Kosice in eastern Slovakia to the Croatian resort of Vodice, about half way along the Adriatic coast.
  
"God alone saved us. I am unable to describe what happened," a 69-year-old passenger who escaped unscathed, Vojtach Vendrak, told the paper.
  
The accident apparently happened when the coach clipped a metal safety barrier before hitting the concrete pillar of a viaduct.
  
When the tourist season is in full swing, Croatia welcomes more than 10 million visitors -- more than twice the country's population of 4.4 million - particularly to the Adriatic coast.
  
More than 280,000 Slovak tourists visited Croatia in 2007 according to the Croatian Tourism Ministry. According to Slovak official figures, they represent about a third of the annual number of Slovaks taking foreign holidays.
  
In the first six months of this year around 300 people were killed in road accidents in Croatia, 28 of them foreigners, according to Croatian police.