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Glasgow
Six confirmed dead as rubbish truck crashes into pedestrians on busy Glasgow street
One witness has described the driver as ‘slumped over the wheel’.
Updated 6.21pm
POLICE IN GLASGOW have confirmed the deaths of 6 people after a bin lorry crashed into a crowd of pedestrians in the Scottish city this afternoon.
At about 2.30pm today, a Glasgow City Council rubbish truck was travelling north on Queen Street when it hit one person near the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA).
It then mounted the pavement and hit several other pedestrians before reaching George Square, where it crashed at the Millenium Hotel.
A short time ago Scottish police said 6 people had been killed in the crash after previously notifying that there had been a “number of fatalities and people injured”.
They also asked people to avoid the area, closed roads and declared the scene a “major incident”.
BBC News reported that there appeared to be nothing “sinister” about the incident, according to police, and one witness described the lorry driver as being “slumped over the wheel”.
Stephen McNeil told the news service that he had been coming out of a shop when he heard a woman screaming and saw a man already lying on the ground.
“We looked around the road further and we seen this bin lorry just mounting the kerb going left to right just hitting people where they were standing,” he said. “Such a horrible scene.”
About six ambulances were called at the scene, as well as fire and police services.
Police said all the casualties, including the driver of the bin lorry, had been taken to either the Southern General Hospital, Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the Western Infirmary.
Witnesses have said that there was a group of Christmas shoppers gathered at the junction, waiting to cross a road when the lorry travelled at speed into them.
Celtic FC coach Brett Molloy has been tweeting from the scene.
“City centre is an eerie, eerie place right now,” he said. “Never want to experience that again.”
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- Additional reporting from Peter Bodkin
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