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34 Injured When Low French Bridge Shears Off Top of Tour Bus

Six Spanish tourists were seriously injured when the 12-foot-tall bus tried to drive under the 8½-foot-high bridge Sunday morning.
Image: Tour bus decapitated in La Madeleine, France
A Spanish tour bus without its top inside a mini-tunnel Sunday in La Madeleine, France.Reuters

Thirty-four Spanish tourists were injured, six of them seriously, when the top of their bus was torn off by a low bridge near the French city of Lille, authorities said Monday.

French authorities said the bus driver was following GPS directions when he tried to drive the 12-foot-tall bus — which was traveling from Bilbao, Spain, to Amsterdam in the Netherlands — under the 8½-foot-high bridge Sunday in the Lille suburb of La Madeleine with 58 passengers aboard.

"We have had many vans collide [with the bridge], but this is the first time it has happened with a bus," Madeleine Deputy Mayor Christian Janssens told Agence France-Presse.

Image: Tour bus decapitated in La Madeleine, France
A Spanish tour bus without its top inside a mini-tunnel Sunday in La Madeleine, France.Reuters

Six passengers were reported stable with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The English-language French newspaper Connexion reported that most of the other victims were treated at and released from hospitals and spent Sunday night in a local sports center before they were returned home to Spain on Monday.

"Most people were sleeping ... and nobody understood what was happening," a passenger from Spain's Basque region who identified herself as Carlota told AFP. "All of a sudden, the roof of the tunnel was right there."

Frederic Fevre, the public prosecutor in Lille, told AFP that the 59-year-old driver had a good record and had told investigators he was following instructions provided by his GPS navigation. Authorities said alcohol and drug tests were negative.

Image: Spain-France bus accident
Mictims meet relatives on arrival Monday at Bilbao's airport in Loiu in northern Spain after their tour bus was involved in a spectacular crash Sunday in northern France.Gari Garaialde / AFP - Getty Images