AIROLO, Switzerland, Oct 24: At least 10 people died in an inferno of flames and lethal fumes when two trucks collided head-on and caught fire in one of the busiest road tunnels through the Swiss Alps on Wednesday, police said.

The toll could reach 14, because it is not known if passengers in five or six cars blocked by the blaze managed to escape, said a spokesman for rescue services, Beppe Savari.

Firefighters described how they fought for several hours to reach the blaze of “great dimensions” in the St. Gotthard tunnel battling against searing heat and thick smoke generated by tyres transported on one of the trucks.

Nine hours after the accident rescue workers said a fire was still burning around a “critical zone” of 100-metres (yards), and a small stretch of the tunnel had collapsed trapping several cars underneath.

The dead included one of the truck drivers and nine people in cars not involved in the head-on collision, who appeared to have been overcome by the smoke.

“We reached about 200 metres (yards) from the accident site and couldn’t move any further in, we had to take to the service tunnel to deal with it,” Bruno Winkler of the fire service in the southern Swiss canton (region) of Ticino told journalists.

“After a few minutes there was a great explosion which sent some of us flying to the ground,” he said.

Police warned that the death toll could rise as rescue workers sifted their way through a 100 metre (yard) portion of the tunnel which collapsed.

“This collapsed on the cars, we don’t know if there were still people inside,” Marco Gagliardi of the St.Gotthard rescue centre said.

Many people fled through emergency exits into the separate service tunnel.

Eight people were rushed to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation and several more were treated for shock, rescue workers said, but their condition was not serious.

Police said emergency procedures worked properly as barriers automatically stopped more traffic entering the tunnel, ventilators switched to emergency settings, and rescue workers arrived within minutes of the first alert.

The early-morning crash occurred just over one kilometre from the southern end of the tunnel, a key part of the main north-south road link through the Alps in southeastern Switzerland and one of the busiest routes for trucks crossing from Germany to Italy.

The 16.5-kilometre long, two-lane, St. Gotthard link is one of the longest road tunnels in the world.

One of the truck drivers survived the crash according to Swiss television and managed to stop and divert oncoming traffic away from the southern side of the accident site immediately afterwards.

People on the northern side fled their cars and escaped on foot through the parallel emergency escape route, while others in cars that already were in the tunnel approaching the accident site were stopped by police and turned back.

As thick black smoke billowed out of the southern exit and tunnel ventilation shafts, local residents were warned to stay indoors and to close their windows in case the smoke was toxic.

Police said the warning was a precautionary measure.

In 1999, an accident in the French-Italian tunnel under the Mont Blanc mountain left 39 people dead. The tunnel has been closed since but is due to reopen before the end of the year despite opposition from local inhabitants.

The St. Gotthard tunnel is generally rated as safe according to Swiss authorities, but has no central barrier dividing its two lanes of traffic heading in opposite directions.

Unlike the Mont Blanc link, the St. Gotthard tunnel also has a separate service tunnel which acts as an escape route for people on foot.—AFP