Coach accident investigation commences

French investigators began Saturday trying to identify the bodies of 43 victims of a coach crash blaze near Bordeaux. Police have also started the inquiry into the cause of France's worst road accident in thirty three years.

Rescue workers transport an injured person on a stretcher during rescue operations near the site where a coach carrying members of an elderly people's club collided with a truck outside Puisseguin near Bordeaux, western France, October 23, 2015. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau

Experts from a police victim identification unit will carry out the autopsies using similar procedures to identifying victims from plane crashes, as the bodies were so badly burnt in Friday's collision.

The accident occurred when a coach carrying members of a pensioners' club on an excursion smashed into a lorry near the village of Puisseguin, among the vineyards of the Saint-Emilion area.

"They will begin working from sunrise, body by body, in a very methodic way" using DNA and dental remains to try to put names to the bodies, said Ghislain Rety, police colonel in the Gironde region.

Formal identification of the victims could take up to three weeks, an expert from the police's victim identification unit said Friday.

Investigators were also due to study the lorry's tachograph, a sort of black box that records the vehicle's speed and journey time.

However, according to Rety, it is so damaged that "it's too early to say if it will be usable."

The wreckage of the vehicles will also be examined to try to establish the circumstances of the crash.

There is still no confirmation of exactly how many people were on the coach as the only official list was aboard and burnt in the blaze.

The pensioners had been heading to the nearby region of Landes to visit an outlet and museum specialising in Bayonne ham, a local delicacy.

Police on Friday said the lorry driver was also killed along with his three-year-old son who was sitting beside him.

Eight people, including the coach driver, managed to escape the burning wreckage.

The crash is the deadliest in France since August 1982, when 53 people including 44 children were killed in a motorway pile-up in the eastern Burgundy region.