Eight schoolchildren who survived the Swiss bus crash that killed 28 people have been flown home to Belgium, while relatives of those killed, who included 22 children, have been identifying the bodies of their loved ones.
Family members were driven on Thursday from a hotel in the southern Swiss town of Sion to the nearby morgue, where the bodies of some of the 22 children and six adults killed in Tuesday's crash were being kept. The two drivers were among those who died.
A British boy was among the 28 people killed, it emerged on Friday. Sebastian Bowles, 11, was a pupil at St Lambertus School in Heverlee, Belgium. A school representative, Dirk De Gendt, said Sebastian's British father Edward and Belgian mother Ann landed in Brussels last night after identifying their son's body in Switzerland. He appealed for the parents to be left to grieve in private.
Christian Varone, police commander for the Swiss canton of Valais who had led families to the crash site, said "They showed great dignity and courage."
Some of the families of the victims flew home from Geneva airport on Thursday night. Separately a plane carrying eight children who had been released from hospital and their relatives also returned to Belgium.
The tourist bus carrying 52 people hit a wall on Tuesday night less than an hour after departing for home from a ski vacation in the Swiss Alps. Twenty-four other children were hurt, some seriously. The cause of the crash is being investigated.
The crash site was about half a mile into the 1.5-mile tunnel. Relatives left flowers in front of the wall that the bus hit.
Bornet said authorities were working to release the bodies of all 28 victims as soon as possible after identification was completed.
In Belgium plans were being made to begin repatriating the bodies with three military planes on Friday, which has been declared a national day of mourning.
Florence Renggli, a spokeswoman for hospitals in Valais, said doctors performed 50 operations on 16 children. Eight had been released, leaving 12 children still in the Sion area. Three others who were more seriously injured were transferred to a hospital in Lausanne and one was taken to a hospital in Bern.
In Sion, Dr Michael Callens said the children in hospital there were "doing well" and should soon be able to be repatriated to Belgium. "We don't know if it's going to be tomorrow or the day after," he said.
It would take longer for the four being treated in Lausanne and Bern to be returned home, he said.
Investigations are under way to determine how a modern bus with two rested drivers could crash inside a tunnel considered safe, resulting in one of the deadliest highway accidents in Swiss history.
Olivier Elsig, the prosecutor for Valais canton, said officials were looking at three possible causes: a technical problem with the bus, a health problem with the driver or human error.
Swiss and Belgian media reported on Thursday that survivors claimed the driver had reached to change a DVD on the onboard entertainment system shortly before the crash. It was unclear whether that could have contributed to the accident. Varone declined to address this question directly but said no line of inquiry was either being excluded or made a priority.
In Sierre people expressed their shock. "I am very sad, because I have children and today I awoke with them and I think very strongly about these people because it's really very hard," said Genevieve Romailler, a pharmacist.
"It's very hard to come to terms with this kind of situation. Even if we didn't know these young victims, we are really taking this to heart and we really moved by this tragedy," said barman Franck Bartolucci.
A Catholic chapel in Sierre was opened to allow the public to pay their respects to the victims, and a memorial mass was being held on Thursday evening at the town's Holy Cross Church.
The Vatican conveyed its condolences to Belgium's Archbishop Andre-Mutien Leonard.