Three British tourists, including one child, have been killed after a Land Cruiser crashed while travelling across a bridge in Iceland.
The 4x4 was carrying seven tourists when it crashed through a barrier on a one-lane bridge, local police said.
The remaining four were airlifted to hospital in the capital Reykjavik with critical injuries and police are not sure when they will be able to speak to them to find out more about the incident.
Officers said one child was among the dead and two, aged seven and nine, among the injured in the crash which took place on a 200-300 metre bridge on the national Route 1 road near Skeidararsandur, a vast sand plain in southern Iceland.
Police said the road was not thought to be icy but humidity could have made the surface slippery for the SUV, which was driving eastbound over the bridge in Nupsvotn, just south of the Vatnajokull glacier.
Chief Superintendent of south Iceland Police Sveinn Kristjan Runarsson said the four injured have been taken to hospital with serious injuries, but added that “we haven’t been able to talk to them about what happened”.
Those involved in the crash are from two British families, and a number of them are thought to be of Indian heritage.
The Indian Ambassador to Iceland, Mr T. Armstrong Changsan, is believed to have visited the survivors in hospital.
Speaking to the BBC, tour guide Adolf Erlingsson described a “very difficult situation” at the scene of the crash.
Erlingsson estimated the car had fallen about five or six metres from the bridge and was a “total wreck”.
He said the crash occurred in an area that was “the most popular destination on the south coast”.
The tour guide described rescue workers arriving at the scene and starting to cut the driver out of the vehicle.
“We had turned the car over a bit,” he said.
“Soon after I arrived we had an SUV with a winch and we use it to lift the car up a little bit to alleviate the pressure on the driver and to try and get him out,” he said.
“It was a horrible sight to come there and see the wreckage and people there,” Erlingsson added.
“Four people were out of the car, one of them deceased,” he said. “Then there were three people, trapped in the car and I think two of them were deceased.
“The driver was alive and trapped more or less under the dashboard.
“We were trying to get the people out of the car and helping them. It was a very difficult situation.”
He said he spoke to some people who were “semi-conscious” outside the vehicle.
“I tried to talk a bit to the driver to calm him down. He was trapped inside the car,” he added.
The identities of those who died have not yet been released.