Eight Killed, 44 Injured in Croatia Bus Crash

A Czech bus carrying more than 50 passengers crashed near a tunnel in Croatia early Saturday, killing eight people and injuring at least 44, the national rescue services said.

"A bus with Czech license plates drove through a safety barrier and turned over" near a tunnel in Sveti Rok, some 230 kilometers (138 miles) south of Zagreb, the National Protection and Rescue Directorate said.

The accident occurred around 4:00 am (0200 GMT) on the road to the Adriatic city of Split, a popular tourist destination.

The bodies of seven victims were found immediately while an eighth was pulled out later, local media reported.

The injured were taken to a hospital in nearby Gospic, while three victims with serious injuries, a woman and two children, were transferred by a military helicopter to the capital Zagreb, rescuers said.

In Prague, a Czech foreign ministry's spokesman Karel Srol was quoted by CTK agency as saying that the lives of two injured passengers were in danger.

A Gospic hospital's surgeon, Goran Nola, said a dozen others were seriously injured, adding that passengers were of all ages, from children to the elderly.

The bus belonged to a travel agency from the southern Czech town of Brno, Srol said.

A spokesman for the travel agency, Martin Vasulin, said all the passengers in the bus, that was heading towards Croatian coastal resort Basko Polje, were Czech nationals, mostly from Brno and its surroundings but also from Prague.

Local media said the bus hit the barrier, turned over and smashed into a concrete fence opposite.

Some 10 million tourists visit Croatia each year, among them hundreds of thousands of Czechs, vacationing on the picturesque Adriatic coast.

The accident is the most serious involving a Czech bus since a crash in March 2003 near the southwestern Czech town of Nazidla, when 20 people were killed.