Yellowstone tour van crash: At least seven dead as vehicle becomes fireball

Seven people have died and eight have been injured following a dramatic bus crash at a major wildlife reserve which saw the vehicle engulfed in flames. The - between a tour van and second vehicle - caused a raging fire on a road just outside the National Park in Idaho.

The tour van and a Dodge Ram pickup collided on Thursday evening, Idaho Police said. The accident took place at around 7.15pm on a highway near Henry's Lake State Park, roughly 16 miles to the west of the famous national park. Among the dead were the driver of the pickup truck, it has been reported, and six of the 14 people inside the tour van at the time. Idaho State have identified one person who died in the accident, with the bodies of several crash victims left charred and unidentifiable.

Fremont County coroner Brenda Dye identified the driver of the pickup as 25-year-old Isaiah Moreno, from Texas, adding she was still waiting for the results of DNA testing to identify the remaining six people. Their bodies were reportedly burned beyond reconition, although the coroner said they were all from outside the US and had been participating in a Yellowstone tour.

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Two were from Italy, she said in an interview, while adding it is unclear from where the remaining four had hailed. Representatives for the police service said in a statement that they were still trying to contact members of the family of people who were killed and injured.

The authorities are also yet to provide a cause of the accident, with an investigation into the incident currently ongoing. Air ambulances and emergency paramedics had rushed to the scene, with dramatic pictures showing the charred wreckage of the vehicles smoking after the crash.

One bystander 60-year-old Roger Merrill, who was driving home when he came across the shocking scene, told the Associated Press he saw the two vehicles become engulfed in flames and attempted to care for survivors.

He said: "It is a very dangerous highway because it leads to the main entrance of Yellowstone National Park." He added: "It's extremely busy." Mr Merrill added that he often saw tourist vans on the highway leading up to the national park, and that its remote location had left him concerned about emergency response times to incidents.

He added: "It took an unnervingly long time for help to arrive just because of the location."

Other drivers had reportedly tried to help following the crash, having jumped from their vehicles to help, the New York Times reported, and were "trying to pull out as many as they could" from the tour van, Ms Dye said. She added that they had helped eight people, including a child, exit the vehicle before it caught fire.

State Police said the highway on which the accident took place, US Highway 20, was closed for nearly seven hours today as emergency responders and the Idaho Transportation Department managed the scene and tried to clear the road.