Crash closes another Alpine tunnel

AIROLO, Switzerland (CNN) -- One of the last remaining routes through the Swiss Alps was closed for several hours on Tuesday after the third serious accident involving a lorry in a week.

The key St Bernhard route was closed on Tuesday after a lorry collided with a passenger vehicle. It reopened several hours later.

The route is the closest alternative to the Gotthard tunnel that was closed after an accident and fire killed at least 11 people.

Police said the lorry driver involved in the latest accident was in a serious condition, but there were no deaths.

The St Bernhard route, which includes the six-kilometre (four-mile) St Bernhard tunnel, was last closed to cargo traffic on Thursday when a truck leaving the tunnel overturned on one of the steep motorway's narrow bends and crashed into oncoming traffic, killing a minibus driver.

MORE STORIES Experts demand tunnel safety push  Timeline: Past tunnel disasters    RESOURCES Picture gallery: Swiss disaster

The closure of both the Gotthard tunnel and the St Bernhard route effectively cut off Italy's main road links to the north following the shutdown in 1999 of the Mont Blanc tunnel after a fire that was also started by a truck.

Extra safety checks kept forensic crews from entering the Gotthard tunnel on Monday to search the debris for more victims of the fire -- Switzerland's worst tunnel disaster.

Search crews delayed the operation as specialists checked potential chemical or toxic waste hazards, police said. The crews were hoping to begin the operation on Tuesday.

Officials have identifed nine of the 10 bodies recovered so far and believe the remaining body is not that of the missing truck driver who crashed head-on into an oncoming truck, sparking the fire.

"We still have one body where we don't know who it is, but we can probably rule out that it is the body of the truck driver who is still missing," police spokesman Luca Bieri told Reuters.

Forensic crews may need up to three weeks to sift through wreckage inside the blackened tunnel.

Reports by relatives of scores of people missing after the disaster led to fears that more than 100 might have died.

But police said only 28 were still unaccounted for and that number was falling steadily as travellers made contact with their loved ones.

The Gotthard, the world's second-longest tunnel, is expected to remain closed for months, cutting a major link between Italy and northern Europe used by an average of 19,000 vehicles a day.

French and Italian transport ministers say the Mont Blanc tunnel will reopen for cars from December 15 and for trucks a few weeks later.