Genoa bridge collapse: Truck driver who stopped inches away from disaster 'suffering from shock' after watching other motorists plunge to their deaths

A truck driver who was inches away from falling 150 ft in the Genoa bridge collapse is suffering from shock after watching other motorists plummet to their deaths.

At least 39 people died when a 650 ft long section of the Morandi Bridge suddenly broke and fell apart in horrifying scenes on Tuesday.

But the driver of a green truck managed to slam his brakes on and stop just in time, before leaping out of the cabin and running to safety.

The 37-year-old father, who has not been named, told rescuers: “I saw the road collapsing, with all the cars that I had in front of me at the time.”

The truck driver had been returning from a series of grocery deliveries near the north Italian port city when the tragedy struck.

The director of Basko supermarket, who the driver was delivering for, confirmed he was suffering from shock and was not yet ready to give an interview.

Pictures taken today show the vehicle still teetering on the edge of the precipice where the driver left it.

Rescuers and sniffer dogs are continuing to search through tonnes of concrete slabs and steel for survivors or bodies.

Two Albanian men were killed in the collapse, named by authorities as Marjus Djerri and Edi Bokrina.

Three French nationals were also said to have died, with local media reporting that the two young women and a man from Toulouse had travelled to Italy for a music festival.

Investigators are also working to determine what caused the stretch of highway to break off from the 150ft high bridge in the north-western port city.

An unidentified woman who was standing below the bridge told RAI state TV that the structure crumbled as if it were a mound of “baking flour”.

The Morandi Bridge is a main thoroughfare connecting the A10 highway that heads for France and the A7 route that continues north towards Milan. Inaugurated in 1967, it is 148ft high, and around half a mile long.

The collapse of the bridge comes eight days after another major accident on an Italian highway, near the northern city of Bologna.

In that case, a tanker truck carrying a highly flammable gas exploded after rear-ending a stopped truck on the road before it was hit from behind itself. The accident killed one person, injured dozens and blew apart a section of a raised eight-lane highway.