Death toll rises to 9 in Swiss highway tunnel crash

GENEVA, Sep 18 (Reuters) The death toll from Saturday's bus crash in an eastern Switzerland highway tunnel has risen to nine dead, police said today.

A bus carrying a team of Swiss ice hockey players collided with a number of other cars and caught fire in the Viamala tunnel near Switzerland's border with Italy and Austria on Saturday afternoon.

Police said one of the cars incinerated in the crash had been carrying four people, not two as first suspected.

A severely injured man, who had been transported to a Zurich hospital by helicopter after the accident, also died, police said later in the day.

Initial estimates were that six people died in the crash, mainly those in cars in the vicinity of the bus.

The Viamala crash was Switzerland's worst highway tunnel accident since 2001, when 11 people were killed in a collision between two trucks in the Gotthard tunnel.

Authorities said the 750-metres-long tunnel was expected to remain closed until Friday.

REUTERS PR RAI2052