SEEWALCHEN, Austria (Reuters) - One person was killed and six were seriously injured when some 60 vehicles slammed into each other in heavy snow on Austria's main east-west highway on Tuesday, police said.
Rescue workers picked their way through bits of twistedmetal, shattered windscreens and lorry freight scattered overthe highway while stretchers and ambulances lined up to takeaway the injured.
"I saw in my rear view mirror how the lorries slammed infrom behind. I got out of my car and all I could hear was thescreaming from the man whose wife had been killed," saidRaphael Auer from Salzburg. "It was pure madness, like abattlefield."
The dead woman was a Spanish citizen living in Switzerland,said police, adding that 30 people were injured in the pileup.
"We had heavy snow and one accident happened ... then aseries of other accidents in its wake," said Guenther Weisslfrom the highway police, who led the rescue operation.
More than 45 police officers and 150 Red Cross rescueworkers attended the crash scene on the A-1 motorway linkingVienna and Salzburg in the province of Upper Austria.
The Austrian motoring association OeAMTC said continuingheavy snow falls forced it to abort flights by some of itsrescue helicopters.
(Reporting by Christine Soukenka; Writing by KarinStrohecker; Editing by Alastair Sharp)
