GENOA, Italy -- A military bus carrying young Italian sailors to watch a major league soccer game plunged 200 feet off a highway in driving rain Sunday, killing 34 people and injuring four, police said.
'I had just got up when I heard a loud bang and the house seemed to shake. I sent out my husband to see what happened. As soon as he went out he heard people screaming,' the Italian news agency Ansa quoted a woman who lived near the overpass as saying.
The bus with 38 sailors aboard smashed through three protective metal barriers in the morning some 7 miles south of Genoa as it headed to Turin for Sunday's big game between Juventus and Inter-Milan.
The sailors in their late teens and early 20's wore civilian clothes for the outing they organized among themselves. They were all national servicemen based at the coastal city of La Spezia, military officials said.
A driving rain and windstorm hampered rescue workers trying to reach the mangled wreckage of the bus in farmland only accessible by foot and helicopter.
'The bus was overturned with its wheels in the air and completely smashed up,' a woman doctor who arrived with first rescue workers said.
'About 20 bodies were scattered around, some of them hurled against boulders, some of them against bushes or tree trunks. Unfortunately only a few people were able to shout for help very feebly,' the doctor said.
Highway police said the gusting winds may have accelerated the speed of the Fiat 370 bus causing it to skid out of control through two crash barriers dividing a dual carriageway and careen through a third guarding a 200-foot precipice.
A local magistrate, state prosecutor Francesca Manca, said she was investigating whether the bus' tires were worn too thin.
Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini rushed to the scene of the crash. The bodies were taken to Genoa's San Martino hospital.
Spadolini said the smash, together with the Irish terrorist bombing Saturday in London and the Madrid disco fire, 'are part of a series of European tragedies that are turning Christmas this year into a sad event.'
Three survivors were listed in serious condition and a fourth who managed to get out of the bus and wander into a village was slightly hurt.
'I saw a boy approaching me,' said one resident. 'He was in shock, dirty and bloody. He had his head in his hands and kept asking where his glasses were. I helped him and carried him to an ambulance.'
First reports said there were 39 people on the bus but officials said later there were 38 because one sailor changed his mind at the last moment.
