Two die in music festival bus crash
Two men have been killed in a crash involving a van and a bus taking people to this weekend's RockNess music festival.
The van driver and his passenger died of their injuries following the collision on the A9 at Ralia, in the Highlands.
The bus driver was airlifted to the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow with serious injuries after she became trapped in the vehicle.
Fourteen passengers have been taken to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness for treatment to a range of injuries, none of which are life-threatening.
Northern Constabulary said there were 47 people on board the bus, including the driver. Police said the vehicle was a service bus from Edinburgh, bound for the three-day festival in Dores, on the banks of Loch Ness.
Officers said the identities of the men who died will not be released until their relatives have been told. The crash happened between the A889 and B9150 junctions.
The Scottish Ambulance Service said the passengers taken to Raigmore Hospital had minor injuries. An ambulance service helicopter based at the Southern General, carrying an Emergency Medical Retrieval Service team of specialists, was used to airlift the driver to hospital, a spokesman said.
The latest deaths on the A9, one of Scotland's most dangerous roads, comes a week after two lorry drivers died in an apparent head-on collision on the road. The lorries, one carrying newspapers and the other barrels of alcohol, crashed on the A9 north of Blair Atholl, Perthshire, in the early hours of last Friday.
The drivers were named as 37-year-old Alex Russell, of Moodiesburn, Glasgow, and John Sommerville, 34, of Carluke, South Lanarkshire.
Friday's crash prompted repeated calls from people on social networking sites for the road to be fully widened to a dual carriageway as soon as possible. The long-awaited upgrade will begin in 2017 and the road is scheduled to be completely dualled by 2025.
