Iceland crash: British women who died after 4x4 plunged from bridge named

Two British women and a baby were killed after a car carrying seven people plunged over the side of a bridge in Iceland.

The two couples involved in the crash have been named locally as Shreeraj Laturia and his wife Rajshree and Supreme Laturia and his wife Khushboo.

They are of Indian heritage and Icelandic police said the women were born in 1979 and 1980 and the child in 2018.

The remaining four are in hospital with critical injuries. Two men travelling in the car are reportedly brothers and the two women are understood to be their wives. The families were on a Christmas holiday.

Their 4x4 Toyota Land Cruiser SUV smashed through a railing on a high single-lane bridge in Skeidararsandur, southern Iceland, at about 9.30am on Thursday and landed on a rocky river bank several metres below.

Tour guide Adolf Erlingsson was among the first at the scene described it as a “very difficult situation”.

“It was horrible,” he told the Associated Press. “The car seemed to have hit the ground many metres from where it stopped. We struggled getting everyone out.”

The cause of the accident is not yet known, but in a statement on Friday police said the Toyota Land Cruiser “seems to have turned on the bridge with the result that it went on top of the railing of the bridge, to the right, following it for a short distance and then turned over off the rail and the bridge.

“There, the car fell down on the ground beneath the bridge.”

Police previously 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.

Those involved in the crash are from two British families, and of Indian heritage.

The Indian Ambassador to Iceland, T Armstrong Changsan, is believed to have visited the survivors in hospital.

On Thursday Chief Superintendent Sveinn Kristjan Runarsso said the injured were airlifted to hospital with serious injuries, but added: “We haven’t been able to talk to them about what happened.”

The national Route 1 road connects coastal towns and villages on the volcanic island home to 350,000 people.

Iceland has seen a huge tourist boom in recent years but its infrastructure has not always kept up. Roads are usually narrow, with many one-lane bridges.

Of the 18 people who have died in traffic accidents in Iceland this year, half of them have been foreign nationals. Last year was the first on record when more foreigners died than residents, according to the Icelandic Transport Authority.

The crash happened just south of Skaftafell National Park, part of the Vatnajokull National Park, which was nominated for inclusion in Unesco’s World Heritage List in 2018.

The Vatnajokull glacier is the largest in Europe, covering 8 per cent of Iceland’s landmass including the island’s tallest peak Hvannadalshnjukur at 2,200 metres tall (7,218ft).

A foreign office spokesman said: “We are supporting the family of several British nationals who were involved in a road traffic accident in Iceland and are in close contact with the Icelandic authorities.”

Press Association contributed to this report