British tourists in Iceland involved in 4×4 bridge plunge
Three tourists have been killed after their 4×4 crashed off a bridge in Iceland.
According to local media, two of those killed are the ‘wives of British brothers’.
One of the dead is a child, and two men and two children who were in the vehicle are reportedly seriously injured.
The accident occurred at around 9.30am when the vehicle slammed through a railing while crossing a high single-lane bridge at Skeidararsandur, a vast sand plain in southern Iceland.
The car, reported to be a Toyota Land Cruiser car rental, fell at least six metres onto the river bed below.
Tour guide Adolf Erlingsson, who was transporting 19 tourists around South Iceland in his own vehicle, who was one of the first on the scene, described the crash site as ‘horrifying’. He took this picture at the scene.
He told Icelandic radio station Bylgjan: "The car was totally smashed up after flying off the bridge and plunging down there.
"When I arrived four had been retrieved from the vehicle, one was dead and three still stuck in the car, two of them probably dead. It was just awful.
"The car seemed to have hit the ground many metres from where it stopped. We struggled getting everyone out."
He said he couldn’t understand how the accident happened and had not noticed any ice on the bridge.
Police said it remains unclear what caused the driver to lose control of the vehicle on the bridge, which is 420 metres long.
Icelandic website www.frettabladid.is said a coast guard helicopter had landed at Landspítali in Fossvogur with the injured tourists.
Lisa
Lisa joined Travel Weekly nearly 25 years ago as technology reporter and then sailed around the world for a couple of years as cruise correspondent, before becoming deputy editor. Now freelance, Lisa writes for various print and web publications, edits Corporate Traveller’s client magazine, Gateway, and works on the acclaimed Remembering Wildlife series of photography books, which raise awareness of nature’s most at-risk species and helps to fund their protection.
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