Eight people were killed and 54 injured Sunday, 12 of them critically, in a pre-dawn pile-up of five vehicles on a motorway in south-west France, authorities said.
The prefect of the Gironde region, Alain Gehin, warned that the death toll could rise given the gravity of some of the injuries suffered in the crash, one of the worst such accidents in France in the past decade.
Initially, officials said that four men, three women and a child had been killed in the pile-up, which occurred at around 4:00 am (0200 GMT) near Belin-Beliet, 40 kilometres (25 miles) south-west of Bordeaux.
But Health Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, who rushed to a Bordeaux hospital where the injured had been taken, later admitted that authorities were having "very serious problems identifying the people killed and critically injured".
Prosecutors said seven adults and a 14-year-old boy had been killed, but noted that forensic experts had thus far only been able to positively identify the body of a Moroccan man who was driving a van at the time of the crash.
Seven of the victims were travelling on board a Spanish-registered coach, which was carrying around 60 passengers, most of them Portuguese.
Portuguese radio TSF reported that the bus had left the northern Portuguese city of Braga and was headed to Paris.
Besides the coach and van, three cars were involved, including one registered in Italy. All were travelling on the same side of the motorway at the time of the crash, which occurred in light rain, police said.
"We were all in the coach, asleep, when suddenly everybody cried out. I thought there was something on the road, the bus spun round and then went over on its side," one of the survivors, 24-year-old Paulo, told AFP.
Several witnesses told AFP that the van driven by the Moroccan man had hit the central guard rail and lost part of the load it was carrying on its roof.
The white coach, its windscreen shattered, was resting on its side at the scene of the accident. Pieces of twisted metal were strewn across the highway. The bodies of the victims were lined up, wrapped in white plastic.
Some 200 firemen, 60 police officers, dozens of ambulances and fire engines, and three helicopters were deployed to attend to the victims, some of whom had to be cut out of their smashed-up vehicles.
Spanish, Portuguese, Moroccan and Italian nationals figured among the wounded, officials said.
The A63 motorway was closed on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year in France - just before the start of the school year - following the deadly accident.
Alcohol tests were to be carried out on all the drivers involved, including a post-mortem test on the van driver, according to Colonel Regis Barou of the French gendarmerie. The two bus drivers, both Portuguese nationals injured in the crash, were to be brought in for questioning as soon as they had sufficiently recovered, the prefect said.
Transport Minister Gilles de Robien said an inquiry had been launched to determine the causes of the accident, calling on motorists to "show the utmost vigilance" on the roads.
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