Five women were killed in a bus crash on a snow-covered road in eastern Spain on Saturday as a severe winter storm caused traffic chaos across the country, Reuters reported. The women, on an organised trip for a widows' group, died when the bus they were travelling in overturned 50 km (30 miles) from the Mediterranean city of Alicante, the fire department said. Another 15 of the 52 passengers were hurt, eight seriously, regional officials said. The cause of the accident was unknown but the road was covered with snow and had been closed the previous evening due to a snowstorm, according to media reports. A severe winter storm that blanketed northern Spain with snow and ice on Friday extended its grip to much of the rest of the country on Saturday, causing numerous closures of roads and mountain passes. Civil protection authorities declared an alert in most of Spain's regions and recommended people not go out in their cars if they could avoid it. Twenty villages near Palencia, 200 km (125 miles) north of Madrid, were cut off by road and it was hard to reach a further 18 villages in the Cantabria region of northern Spain, state radio said. Snow fell at sea level in the northeastern region of Catalonia.
