One man killed, tourists injured in coach crash

A Spanish lorry driver and at least 11 British tourists were injured when a coach crashed into a truck in the Mediterranean resort area of Alicante late on Thursday, the British embassy and a hospital said. “There was a car crash and a Spanish driver died. Some British people were injured,” an embassy spokesman in Madrid told Reuters. Spanish newspapers put the number of injured as high as 37, though the embassy official could not confirm the number. “Several are still receiving medical treatment and there are a couple of relatively serious injuries,” the spokesman added. A 91-year-old British woman was in intensive care with a pelvis fracture and ten other Britons were suffering from shock and concussion, and were expected to be released today or tomorrow, a hospital spokeswoman said. The coach carrying about 50 elderly British tourists collided with an overturned truck full of oranges on a road exit just outside the resort of Benidorm, local media reported. A car then slammed into the truck at around 1730 GMT, killing the truck's driver. According to the Spanish authorities, the driver of the lorry was killed outright and was trapped in the cabin. The tourists were from a number of tour agencies on an excursion, the embassy spokesman said. Most of them were from Bolton and Doncaster in the north of England and had visited Spain on several occasions. A government spokesman said that the accident could have been a tragedy, but the skill of the coach driver and the protective fence on the motorway prevented the death toll from rising. He added that examination of the tachographs of the two vehicles would determine if speeding was a factor. He said that access to and exiting from the motorways was always difficult as most drivers do not maintain the right speed, although he added that in this case, until the tachographs are examined, it is impossible to say if this was a factor. The injured were taken to the hospitals of Villa Joyosa, San Juan and Clinica Benidorm, he said. Fifteen people were taken to the Villa Joyosa hospital, but only one has been detained with serious injuries, including broken ribs. The crash was not the only fatal accident.