Epress.am News from Armenia
At least 28 people — including 22 children — have been killed in a coach crash in a tunnel in Switzerland, the BBC reports.
Another 24 children were injured in the crash near Sierre, in the canton of Valais, close to the border with Italy.
The coach, carrying 52 people back to Belgium, hit a wall in the tunnel head-on late on Tuesday. Both of the coach’s drivers were among those killed.
The children, from the Belgian towns of Lommel and Heverlee, were returning home after a skiing holiday.
The bus crashed shortly after 21:00 (20:00 GMT) on Tuesday.
In Brussels, the Belgian foreign ministry said most of the children were aged around 12, and the bus was one of three hired by a Christian group. The other two reached Belgium safely.
The children had spent a week skiing in Val d’Anniviers in the Swiss Alps.
Those on board the bus that crashed were from ‘t Stekske primary school in Lommel, close to the Dutch border, and from Sint Lambertusschool in Heverlee, near Leuven.
Some of the injured were flown by helicopters to hospitals in Lausanne, Bern and other Swiss cities.
Swiss prosecutor Olivier Elsig told a news conference the bus was new, or nearly new, and was equipped with safety belts.
In a tunnel where the speed limit is 100km/h (62 mph), Elsig said the bus collided with the right-hand wall and then hit, head-on, a concrete wall that forms part of an emergency access section. An investigation is under way.