Swedish police were last night trying to confirm the identities of two children, believed to Irish, who were killed in a road traffic accident near Stockholm.
A two-year-old girl and a boy aged between five and seven were killed and five other people were injured when a car was in collision with a truck shortly before 2 p.m. local time yesterday.
Swedish police told The Irish Times that the accident occurred when the front left tyre of a truck exploded, sending it out of control and into the path of an oncoming car containing a family of seven, approximately 30 miles south of Stockholm.
"The tyre of the truck exploded or went flat, sending it [the truck\] into the wrong side of the road in front of the car with the family," said a local police officer, Gert Rosvall.
Officer Rosvall said the two children were fatally injured and died after being airlifted to hospital. The remaining two adults and three children were taken to Karlenska Hospital in Stockholm for treatment.
A hospital spokeswoman said the injuries sustained by the other occupants of the car were not thought to be life-threatening.
The truck-driver, a Swede, was also injured in the accident. He was taken to a different hospital in the town of Uppsala, 70km north of Stockholm.
Swedish police were trying to establish the identities of the victims and injured through interpreters at the hospital.
The car in which the seven were travelling was temporarily registered as Swedish, but it was from the UK, while it was registered under a Northern Ireland name.
It remains to be confirmed if all seven people in the car were from Ireland and were members of one family. A spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said late yesterday evening that they had not been contacted about the accident.