Police investigating a bus fire that killed at least six people in western Switzerland have said they believe it was started by a “marginalized and disturbed” Swiss man who set himself on fire on board.
The vehicle, operated by a passenger and mail transport service, caught fire on Tuesday afternoon in Kerzers, a town of about 5,000 people about 20 kilometers west of Bern in the canton of Freiburg.
“A witness statement indicated that a man… of Swiss origin boarded the bus with bags. At some point, he doused himself with a flammable substance and set himself on fire,” Freiburg canton prosecutor Raphael Bourquin said at a news conference on Wednesday.
He said the family of the man, who was from the canton of Bern and was in his 60s, had recently reported him missing and that “current evidence describes him as a marginalized and disturbed individual.”
“There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that this could be a terrorist act,” Bourquin said, adding that “it appears that this person is among the deceased.”
Prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation.
In addition to the six dead, five people were injured as a result of the fire. Police could not say how many passengers were on the bus at the time.
Freiburg police communications chief Martial Pugin said two of the victims were in serious condition, while a third was able to return home overnight. The victims were between 17 and 65 years old, authorities said, without giving details about their nationalities.
Swiss President Guy Parmelin, whose country was hit by a devastating fire on New Year’s Eve in the Crans-Montana ski resort, expressed his condolences to the families of the victims. “I am shocked and saddened by the fact that people in Switzerland have once again lost their lives in a serious fire,” he said.
In the early hours of January 1, a basement bar in Crans-Montana was engulfed in flames as people celebrated the New Year. Forty-one people were killed and 115 others were injured.
Images from Kerzers posted on social media showed tall flames billowing from the bus windows and a plume of black smoke rising into the sky. Emergency services personnel worked late into the night at the scene.
The video after the fire was extinguished showed the charred remains of the yellow vehicle. It was removed from the road overnight.
“Everything happened very quickly and, in a few moments, everything was on fire,” a witness told media outlet Blick. “The heat even caused the tires to explode and fly up to 200 meters away.”
Others told the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper that they saw injured people screaming and writhing in pain in the street. “It was horrible,” said Hans-Jürg Stocker, who lives near the scene.
Two women who work in a building near the fire scene reported hearing a loud bang and people throwing objects at the bus. “Apparently they wanted to break the windows to free the people,” one of the women told the Tages-Anzeiger.
Nirosan Vickneswaran, 37, was anxiously awaiting news of his cousin, who was on the bus when it caught fire. “We don’t know if he is injured or worse,” he told Reuters. Police had taken DNA samples from the family and indicated it could take up to 48 hours to find out, he said.
Mina Gendre was about to close the store where she works when she saw that the bus, which had stopped unexpectedly across the street, had a small fire inside. He said that within about half a minute, it had burst into flames.
“It was so shocking. I saw someone run out of the burning bus,” he said. As smoke billowed from the bus, Gendre closed the store door to protect it while bystanders helped put out a person’s fire with a jacket.
Freiburg state council member Romain Collaud said the bus involved was not an electric vehicle. Although the cause of the fire has not yet been determined, the theory that an electric motor caught fire can be ruled out. “It was a bus with a combustion engine,” he told broadcaster RTS.
It was a mail bus, a common feature of rural life in the Alpine region. The distinctive yellow buses serve people in more remote areas, connecting them to cities and transporting letters and packages. They are used by approximately half a million people every day, including schoolchildren.
Stefan Regli, CEO of PostBus, said in a statement: “What happened yesterday was a terrible tragedy. Like me, all PostBus and Swiss Post employees are shocked.”
Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report.
