Investigators of the Swiss bus crash that killed 22 school children and six adults say the driver could have had a heart attack at the wheel.
The theory is just one of three being looked at as the cause of the horrific smash which saw the front of the vehicle, which contained a party of 52 returning to their homes in Belgium from a skiing holiday in Switzerland, all but disintegrate.
Human error or a technical problem with the coach are the other two possibilities. It came as a criminal prosecutor discounted police theories the bus, which ploughed into an underpass wall, had been speeding.
Twenty eight others were seriously injured, with two other children fighting for their lives after been airlifted to nearby hospitals.
It also comes as the first rescuers on the scene described how the 'screams of survivors' put them into a state of shock.
Alain Rittemer, chief of emergency services in the Canton of Valais, said it took a full two hours to work their way through the 'apocalypse' of mangled wreckage on Tuesday night.
He said: 'The first thing we heard on arriving at the scene was the screams of the children - it's almost impossible to describe. Hearing the screams put rescuers in a state of shock. All are experienced, but you cannot imagine what it was like.'
The crash, in which 28 people were also seriously injured, happened shortly after the party of 52 schoolchildren and staff from Belgium and Holland set off for home following a holiday in the Alpine ski resort of Val d'Annivers.
The coach entered the two-mile-long Sierre tunnel on the A9 motorway at around 9.15pm on Tuesday and clipped the kerb in the outside lane, before careering into a concrete wall.
Mr Rittemer said his team of paramedics arrived within 20 minutes, and had to break their way in through windows at the back.
He said: 'You could imagine that the children whom we found were our own. This was a vision which we were not used to seeing, and I've been doing this job for 20 years. Our main aim was to get to the children, most of whom could not move because they were trapped in the piles of scrap metal.
'That said, we did not need to speak. We only needed to look in their eyes and hold their hands.'
He added: 'We reached the last casualty two hours after our arrival on the scene 20 minutes after the accident. The last dead body, that of the second driver, was finally removed at 4.15am'.
Parents of the victims gathered at the two primary schools in Belgium yesterday before boarding a military aircraft. They did not know whether their children were dead or alive. 'There's no news, simply no news,' said one red-eyed father.
A 12-year-old girl aboard the bus who escaped with serious injuries was the first survivor to describe what happened. She said: 'I felt a hard jolt. Then everything went dark. 'The seats worked loose and were flung around the bus. I was hurled forward and ended up pinned between two of the seats.' The girl broke both of her legs and an arm.
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