Belgian children escape coach fire on Swiss motorway

The driver of a Belgian coach on a skiing trip to Italy had to remove his 45 passengers, including 38 children, from the bus after it caught fire in Switzerland, the BBC reports. Seeing smoke coming from the engine at about 5.00, he pulled on to the hard shoulder of the A2. No one was hurt, and a replacement coach was sent. Last March, 28 people died when a Belgian school coach crashed, and an investigation is still under way into the crash in a tunnel on the A9 near Sierre, in the canton of Valais. Among the dead were 22 children returning from a skiing holiday. Yesterday’s incident occurred near the village of Goeschenen, in the canton of Uri. According to Le Soir, most of the children on the coach, believed to be between 10 and 12, were asleep when the driver stopped. The evacuation passed off in an orderly fashion, the paper said, with the group taken to a local fire station. A Swiss investigation into the fire has been opened.