Five killed in M1 motorway crash

Five people have been killed after a head-on car crash on the M1 motorway, police have said.

A
VW Passat, apparently going the wrong way on the southbound carriageway
near Luton, smashed into a Jaguar at 11.20pm on Saturday, Bedfordshire
Police said.

A spokesman for the force said the
driver of the Passat and four people in the Jaguar - two men and two
women - were pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver of the Passat was thought to be Polish, while the occupants of the Jaguar were believed to be from London.

A
spokeswoman for Bedfordshire Police said: "A VW Passat appears to have
been travelling northbound on the southbound carriageway between
junctions 10 and 11.

"The Passat was in
collision with a Jaguar travelling southbound. The VW driver and the
two men and two women in the Jaguar are all dead at the scene - there
are no survivors."

The part of the motorway where the crash happened was down to one lane for repairs, the force said.

Gary
Sanderson from the East of England Ambulance Service said the five
crash victims were "quickly" pronounced dead by the emergency services.

He said: "The cars were unrecognisable and there was nothing that could be done for the people involved.

"The debris is spread over quite a lot of the carriageway."

Mr Sanderson added: "We are currently working to release the victims from the vehicles, and then take them to a local mortuary."

Insp
Colin Bonner, from Bedfordshire Police's road policing unit, said he
had no idea why the Passat had been going in the wrong direction.

"There
was no reason for that vehicle to have turned round at all, so we are
very interested if anyone witnessed that vehicle turning around and any
reason why they saw it turn round."

Police are urgently seeking witnesses to the crash. Anyone with information is asked to call 01234 841212.