A British youth was killed and at least 11 injured, four seriously, when a bus carrying 40 boys and 10 adults crashed Monday on a highway near the central French town of Vierzon, police said.
Police attributed the accident to a driver of the coach dozing off as the party traveled between Paris and the central city of Clermont-Ferrand, toward a summer camp in the Dordogne region.
All of the children on board were boys aged 11 to 18, said Gordon Menzies, the manager of Scotland's Rennies Coach Company, who had chartered out the Volvo coach.
"The company is devastated. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened here," Menzies said. "Our hearts go out to the child's parents."
He said the passengers included 21 children and six adults from Dunfermline in Scotland, who were members of the 41st Edinburgh Boy's Brigade.
Nineteen children and two adults were from the Chadwell Heath Foundation school in Romford, Essex, Menzies added.
The school's head teacher, Keith Wilkinson, said he believed the dead youth was among the Edinburgh party.
Speaking from the school, Wilkinson said he had been reassuring distressed parents of the school's children who were on board the coach.
"Obviously having heard the news on the radio, there have been concerned parents and I'm trying to reassure them," he said.
"We are deeply shocked and our thoughts go out to all the parents and children, particularly the parents in Edinburgh.
"To my knowledge, it is a child from Edinburgh that has been killed. We just hope that all will be sorted out as quickly as possible. At the moment it's chaotic at the scene," he added.
Only two of the school's pupils were thought to be injured, a girl with a cut to her face and a boy with a hurt neck.
"I'm waiting for the teachers on the bus to contact us again. They contacted us this morning but their first priority is to make sure our kids are okay," Wilkinson said.
Emergency services remained at the scene into the morning, still trying to extract the body of the youth killed in the crash from underneath the wreckage, police said.
Those injured were being evacuated by helicopter to nearby hospitals at Vierzon and Bourges, firefighters said. Four were described as being in a serious condition. The latest toll revised earlier reports that said 17 were injured.
Speaking shortly after the crash, which left the bus smashed at the side of the highway and tipped on its side, one of the groups' adult supervisors said the drivers had swapped shifts every two hours.
Menzies said the Volvo coach, a model registered in 1995, was fully fitted with seatbelts, and that it had been hired by the children's activity holiday company PGL.
Specialists have been called in to provide psychological counseling, rescue workers said.
In London, Britain's Foreign Office said it had set up an emergency hotline for worried relatives.
Traffic along the highway, the A71, was confined to one lane -- VIERZON, France (AFP).
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
