Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo attended church services on Friday in tribute to 29 German tourists who died when their bus tumbled down a slope and crashed into a house on the tourist island of Madeira. Investigators are still trying to determine why the vehicle crashed off the road before ending up mangled on the side of a hillside near the town of Canico on Wednesday.
Portuguese public TV RTP reported on Friday that the bus's accelerator was thought to have got stuck and that the driver might have tried to stop the speeding vehicle by hitting a wall. Advancing another theory, a 60-year-old German holidaymaker who escaped with a broken rib told Portuguese television: "I think the brakes were gone, I cannot imagine another reason" for the crash.
Sixteen wounded people, of whom 14 were German, remained in hospital in the regional capital Funchal.
"They are all in a stable condition," said the deputy clinical director of the hospital, Miguel Reis. An aircraft is waiting to repatriate the dead and wounded victims once they are able to be moved, the German foreign ministry told AFP. Most of the dead were aged in their 40s and 50s, according to local authorities. They were among the more than one million tourists who visit the Atlantic islands off the coast of Morocco each year, attracted by their subtropical climate and rugged volcanic terrain.
Rebelo visited the accident site on Friday and then walked to the nearby hotel where the bus had started its journey, AFP reporters saw. He voiced his "solidarity with the victims" and thanked the emergency services. He later visited survivors in hospital and then attended separate masses at a Presbyterian church and at the cathedral in Funchal.
"Today we are gathering together because the survivors and relatives of the victims, more than ever, need our attention and support," German pastor Ilse Berardo told AFP. Portugal's government on Thursday decreed three days of national mourning.
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