Black ice snarls German roads, 30 hurt in coach collision

Jan 6, 2011, 11:09 GMT

Berlin - Black ice made German highways treacherous Thursday and was blamed for a crash that injured 30, four of them seriously, on a main autobahn.

A coach which appeared to have come from Kosovo skidded into oncoming traffic and was hit square-on by an Italian semi-articulated truck before dawn on the autobahn near Augsburg. The bus overturned.

Police said the coach driver had braked hard to avoid hitting two other vehicles which had just collided on the slippery road. The highway connects the main cities of Stuttgart and Munich.

Hundreds of non-fatal road collisions were reported all over the country. In the capital Berlin, Tegel airport ceased operations for part of the morning after its runways and taxiways became too slippery for planes to use.

Temperatures in Germany have risen just above zero Celsius. A cold spell during most of December took soil temperatures below freezing. As a result, sleet - rain mixed with snow - turned to a layer of smooth ice when it spread Thursday on roads and paths.

In the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, up to 2 centimetres of such hard ice covered many roads. Municipal bus services in some German cities were suspended because of the ice and schools were declared closed in parts of Lower Saxony state.

Forecasters said worse was to come, with heavy rain and high winds possible later in the day.

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