7 killed in highway crash near Yellowstone

Seven people were killed and eight others injured after a van carrying more than a dozen tourists collided with a pickup truck in a fiery highway crash near Yellowstone National Park, Idaho state police said on Friday.

The cause of the accident, which occurred about an hour and 15 minutes before sunset on Thursday, remains under investigation, according to a state police news release.

The Mercedes passenger van was transporting a tour group with 14 people aboard near Henry's Lake when it collided with a Dodge Ram pickup, then burst into flames, police said.

Six people from the van as well as the pickup driver, its only occupant, were killed, according to police.

All eight of the survivors from the van were taken to hospitals with varying degrees of injuries, police spokesperson Aaron Snell said. Information about the victims was being kept confidential pending notification of next of kin.

The New York Times cited Fremont County coroner Brenda Dye as saying that the pickup driver was from Texas and that all six occupants of the van who died were from outside the United States, two of them from Italy.

The accident occurred on US Highway 20 near Henry's Lake in eastern Idaho, about 20 miles (32.18 km) west of Yellowstone. Weather conditions appeared clear in a news video from the scene. Authorities provided no details about the circumstances of the accident.

According to Dye, two witnesses to the crash jumped out of their vehicle to pull victims from the van, and managed to extract eight people from the wreckage, including a child, before the van caught fire, the Times reported.

State police said the highway was closed in both directions for nearly seven hours while emergency and transportation crews worked to manage the scene and clear the roadway.