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French teenage girl killed in Czech bus crash

A teenage girl died and dozens of people were injured after a French tourist bus filled with children skidded off a motorway west of Prague on Monday morning, emergency services told AFP.

Published: 8 April 2013 08:29 CEST

French teenage girl killed in Czech bus crash

The approximate site (marked "A") of a fatal bus crash on April 8th, west of the Czech capital Prague. Photo: Google Maps

"We have registered one dead and I think it's the final number," said Lenka Ptackova, a spokeswoman for the regional emergency service.

Earlier it was reported that it was the driver who had been killed.

Ptackova said the girl who died was "aged 17-20 years, according to estimates from the site", she said.

A further 41 people were injured.

"The bus was full of French kids. Some of the injured were taken to hospital by helicopters," said Pavla Jakoubkova, spokeswoman for the local fire brigade.

Ptackova said all the passengers had been taken to hospital with injuries ranging from light to serious. Most of the passengers were youths aged 10-18, according to rescuers.

The accident occurred after 5.30am local time near Rokycany, about 80 km west of the Czech capital Prague.

"The bus skidded off the motorway, crossed a field, broke a few trees and fell across another road and finally crashed into a slope," said Jakoubkova.

Pictures in Czech media disclosed the bus belonged to Champagne Mobilites, a unit of French transport group RATP. Champagne Mobilites offers transport in the Marne and Ardennes regions, according to its website.

Police spokeswoman Martina Korandova said the police were investigating the possible cause of the accident.

She declined to give details about the bus or where it was heading, citing a Czech law protecting personal information. The French embassy said after the accident that it had no details to give either.

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Aya Biran , a paternal aunt of Eitan Biran who was the sole survivor of a deadly cable car crash in Italy, arrives at Tel Aviv’s Justice Court on October 10, 2021

Aya Biran , a paternal aunt of Eitan Biran who was the sole survivor of a deadly cable car crash in Italy, arrives at Tel Aviv’s Justice Court on October 10, 2021. Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP

The battle for custody of Eitan Biran, the sole survivor of the May accident that killed 14 people, has captured headlines since his maternal grandfather, Shmulik Peleg, brought him to Israel on a private jet last month.

The child lost his parents, younger brother and great-grandparents in the May 23 accident near the top of the Mottarone mountain in the northwestern Piedmont region, where the family was out on a Sunday excursion to the scenic spot served by the cable car.

The cable car’s pull cable snapped just before it reached destination. It then flew backwards, dislodging itself from a second, supporting cable, and crashed to the ground.

Investigations later revealed that emergency brakes that could have stopped the car on its supporting cable, avoiding the tragedy, had been deliberately deactivated to avoid delays following a technical malfunction.

Three individuals responsible for the cable car’s management were subsequently arrested.

The wreckage of a cable car that crashed on the slopes of the Mottarone peak above Stresa, Piedmont on May 23, 2021, killing 14.

The wreckage of a cable car that crashed on the slopes of the Mottarone peak above Stresa, Piedmont on May 23, 2021, killing 14. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP.

Peleg has insisted that he drove Eitan from Italy to Switzerland before jetting him back to Israel – instead of returning him paternal aunt Aya Biran, who lives in northern Italy – because Eitan’s late parents wanted him to be raised in the Jewish state.

But Peleg has become the subject kidnapping probe by Italian prosecutors and Israeli police questioned him over those allegations last month.

A statement Monday from the Tel Aviv court where Aya Biran had filed a complaint said judges “did not accept the grandfather’s claim that the aunt has no custody rights”.

It recognised an Italian judgement that established Biran as a legitimate guardian and said Peleg had “unlawfully” removed the boy from his aunt’s care.

The court “ordered the return of the minor to his usual place of residence in Italy”.

The court also found that “a connection” between the surviving members of the Italy- and Israel-based relatives was in Eitan’s “best interests”.

Peleg was also ordered to pay Biran’s legal fees, amounting to 70,000 shekels ($22,000).

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Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather of Eitan Biran, hugs a relative outside the Justice Court in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on October 8, 2021.

Shmuel Peleg, the grandfather of Eitan Biran, hugs a relative outside the Justice Court in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on October 8, 2021. Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP

The case has stirred emotions in Israel, and throngs of journalists had surrounded the Tel Aviv court for hearings last month, with some pro-Peleg protesters insisting it was wrong to send a Jewish child out of Israel.

Before judges ordered the sides to stop talking to the media, Peleg told Israel’s Channel 12 in September that his grandson was “in the place where he is supposed to be, in his home, in Israel.”

Eitan and his parents, Amit Biran and Tal Peleg, had been living in Italy, where Amit Biran was studying medicine, together with their other child, Tom.

Eitan suffered severe chest and abdominal injuries and spent a week in intensive care after the May accident that occurred when a cable snapped on the aerial tram bringing weekend visitors to the top of the Piedmont region’s Mottarone mountain.

The accident was one of Italy’s worst in over two decades.

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