At least 33 people were hurt in a motorway pile-up involving some 115 vehicles in a heavy snowstorm in the Czech Republic on Thursday, emergency services said.
They said some 50 kilometres (30 miles) of the country's main highway, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of Prague on the road to Brno would be closed for the rest of the day.
Around 20,000 people were blocked on the key road by the early afternoon, the fire service said.
"First reports say at least 11 people were hurt, two of them seriously," regional emergency services chief Lukas Kettner said. That figure was later updated to 33 injured, six seriously.
"As far as the eye can see there are damaged vehicles. There are rescue helicopters, firemen and police. I have never seen a thing like that," one woman at the scene of the accident, Katerina Buzkova, told the website of the daily newspaper, Dnes.
Fire service spokeswoman Petra Musilova said 12 teams of firemen and helicopters were scrambled to the accident.
