This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

At least 43 people have been killed in France’s worst road accident in more than 30 years after a coach carrying pensioners on a day trip collided with a lorry and caught fire in the south-west of the country.

The crash happened at about 7.30am on the bend of a narrow, winding country road near the village of Puisseguin among the vineyards of the Saint-Émilion region, east of Bordeaux. The coach hit a lorry carrying wood and burst into flames.

“France and the French are in mourning today,” said the prime minister, Manuel Valls, who arrived at the scene with the interior and transport ministers to “express the nation’s emotion” after what he called an appalling catastrophe. “People died in atrocious conditions inside a bus in flames after a very violent head-on collision,” he said.



The interior ministry said firefighters had faced a “gigantic blaze” when they arrived at the scene. French television showed aerial images of the coach’s charred shell. Most of the victims were thought to have been killed by the fire.

The death toll stood at 43 on Friday evening – 41 coach passengers, the lorry driver, and his son, who was sitting beside him. Eight people, including the coach driver, managed to escape the burning wreckage. Four of the survivors were seriously injured with burns or head injuries.

An investigation has been launched into the circumstances of the crash. Xavier Sublett, the mayor of Puisseguin, told reporters: “The driver of the lorry appears to have lost control of his vehicle, leaving him stranded in the middle of the road. The bus driver was unable to avoid the accident.”

Gérard Dupuy, a town hall official in Puisseguin, told France Info radio the crash had happened on a hazardous bend, where there had been other accidents in the past. Local resident Yvette Seguy told France’s i-Tele TV station the bend is known to be dangerous.

Some reports suggested the coach driver, unable to avoid the collision, had opened the doors with the vehicle still in motion.

“The bus driver was slightly injured,” Xavier Stubblet, the mayor of Puisseguin, told the newspaper Sud Ouest: “He had the commendable reaction of opening the doors to allow the maximum [number] of passengers to get off the bus.”



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The coach had set off early in the morning from the small village of Petit-Palais-et-Cornemps in the Gironde region and was less than 10 minutes into its journey. The passengers were members of a pensioners’ social club from Petit-Palais-et-Cornemps and several surrounding villages.



The group was on its way south to the Béarn region to hear a talk and eat lunch at a traditional restaurant serving the local speciality garbure, a ham and cabbage soup, Sud Ouest reported.

Pierre-Henry Brandet, an interior ministry spokesman, said he believed all of the crash victims were French nationals.

“It’s an incredible tragedy with an extremely heavy toll,” Brandet said. “It’s a catastrophe. They were retired people, elderly people, who were going on a day out.”

The French president, François Hollande, on an official visit to Athens, said he and France had been “plunged into sadness”. “The French government has fully mobilised after this terrible tragedy,” he said.

The crash is the deadliest in France since August 1982, when 53 people including more than 40 children died in a motorway collision.