The Age
 AP Photo/Filip Horvat Rescuers examine the wreckage of a Slovakian bus in Croatia Sunday. The bus, carrying 49 passengers, slammed into a bridge pillar killing 14 people and injuring 30. The cause of the accident is under investigation. |
GOSPIC, Croatia — A Slovak tour bus has crashed on a highway in Croatia killing 14 people and leaving two in a critical condition, a Slovak official has said.
The bus with 49 passengers swerved off the Zagreb-Split highway near a mountain town of Gospic and slammed straight-on into an overpass concrete pillar shortly before 6am (1400 AEST), spokesman for the Slovak Interior Ministry Erik Tomas said.
The mostly elder vacationers were on the way from the eastern Slovak city of Kosice to Vodice, a resort town on the central Adriatic coast, he said.
Rescue and medical teams, including airbourne paramedic crews, rushed to the scene, roughly halfway between the capital Zagreb and Split, the country’s major Adriatic port.
Nineteen people, all likely to be Slovak citizens, were treated in hospitals in Gospic and Zagreb, including two passengers in a critical condition, Slovak officials said.
The cause of the accident was not immediately known. Police suspected either an exploded tyre or the driver falling asleep, the spokesman said.
Slovak Foreign Minister Jan Kubis planned to head to the scene later Sunday onboard a government plane that would return with the accident survivors.