BERLIN, SANA — Freezing rain and cold weather buffeting Germany were blamed for traffic accidents that left three dead on Tuesday while Munich Airport temporarily suspended flights.
AP reported that one student was killed in a crash involving a school bus in the Erzgebirge mountains in the eastern German state of Saxony, police said. At least 10 other schoolchildren were taken to a hospital. Two adults, including the bus driver, were seriously injured.
The bus skidded into the side of a winter road maintenance vehicle in Sehmatal county near the Czech border, German news agency DPA reported. It then crashed head-on into a tree and the impact was so strong that it completely destroyed the front of the vehicle.
In Munich, all flights were either canceled or postponed between 6 a.m. and noon (0500-1100 GMT), with the airport warning that many flights scheduled for later in the day might also be affected by the severe weather conditions.
Two other people died in a collision between a car and a tractor-trailer on the A8 highway in Upper Bavaria. According to the police, their car skidded under the rear of a truck, which had come to a stop across the highway overnight from Monday to Tuesday due to frozen rain on the highway’s surface, DPA reported.