Three people die in a serious accident on the A2. A truck and a car with a trailer burn out. The salvage work was difficult.

Three people died in a rear-end collision on Autobahn 2 near Burg in Jerichower Land (Saxony-Anhalt). A truck driver drove into a traffic jam on Tuesday afternoon, said a police spokeswoman. The truck and a car with a caravan burned out completely at the accident site. The truck driver and the two occupants of the car were fatally injured, the spokeswoman said in the evening. The salvage work has been completed. The police initially gave no information on the identity of the dead. Another truck driver was taken to hospital with serious injuries.

In the rear-end collision at noon, the truck pushed a car with a caravan onto a truck driving in front. The collision caused the truck to catch fire, police said. The fire therefore spread quickly. A thick cloud of smoke formed at the scene of the accident. The fire brigade began the rescue work in the early afternoon.

A2 completely closed in both directions

However, these were particularly difficult because, according to the police, the car was a hybrid vehicle. It had to be flooded in a special container because of the battery, the spokeswoman said. During the extinguishing work, the A2 was completely closed in both directions. According to the information, traffic in the direction of Hanover was diverted at the Burg-Zentrum junction, in the direction of Berlin at the Lostau junction. The accident happened about 30 kilometers from the Brandenburg border.

The A2 is an important east-west connection. Again and again there are serious accidents involving trucks. On Tuesday morning near Marienborn (Börde district) on Saxony-Anhalt’s border with Lower Saxony, a truck drove unbraked into a traffic jam and pushed three other trucks into each other. Three truck drivers were seriously injured, police said. Several liters of operating materials were distributed on the road and in the embankment. The Autobahn was still closed in the direction of Hanover in the evening.