“The bodies of the victims of the Verona bus tragedy are expected to be returned home on Friday”, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó said on Hungarian M1 television’s evening news program.

The competent Italian prosecutor will be forwarding the authorisations for burial to the municipality to whom the stretch of motorway involved in the accident also belongs, the Minister said.

Based on these documents, the municipality will be issuing the death certificates, based on which it will in turn permit the bodies to be issued and transported home.

Once the required documents have been issued, the bodies will be transported home perhaps on Thursday, but more likely on Friday.

Mr. Szijjártó also said that the identification of the bodies and the two injured passengers who are still in critical condition has been completed and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has begun informing the relatives; around half of the families have been successfully contacted so far.

“We will be continuing to try to contact them by telephone throughout this evening until we have succeeded in informing all of the victims’ relatives about the results of the identification process”, he added.

At around midnight on 20 January, a bus full of Hungarian students suffered an accident near Verona, Italy, leaving thirteen dead and twenty-six injured. Most of the passengers were from Budapest’s Szinyei Merse Pál Secondary School, including students, former alumni, teachers and their families.

(Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade/MTI)