# Bus carrying Ukrainian passengers crashes on France’s A81, killing four and injuring dozens
Standfirst: French authorities said four people were killed and 34 others injured when an autocar carrying Ukrainian adults and teenagers crashed on the A81 in Sarthe on 2025-06-13.
A coach crash on France’s A81 autoroute killed four people and injured dozens more after a bus carrying Ukrainian passengers overturned in the Sarthe department, according to reporting from Midi Libre. The event date was 2025-06-13, and the scale of the casualties made the crash one of the deadliest road incidents in the region in recent months.
The source report said the vehicle was carrying both adolescents and adults of Ukrainian nationality. The prefecture said four people died and 11 others were seriously injured. It also gave a provisional toll of 34 people with minor injuries. The crash occurred in the direction from Rennes toward Le Mans near the commune of Degré, after the A11/A81 junction, according to the report.
Emergency response quickly forced traffic changes on the motorway. Midi Libre quoted an autoroute update saying circulation was interrupted in both directions while rescue teams worked at the scene. The road closure helped clear a path for emergency vehicles and evacuation, but it also underscored the severity of the incident, with the motorway effectively becoming an active rescue zone.
The reporting attributes the key figures to the local prefecture, while also noting that some accounts first emerged through AFP and regional coverage. The body count and injury totals were still provisional at the time of publication, which is standard in large crash scenes where triage, transport and patient classification can change over the first hours. Still, the core facts were clear: multiple deaths, serious injuries and a busload of mostly Ukrainian passengers caught in a high-impact motorway accident.
The article provides few additional details about the cause. That restraint matters, because early crash reporting often mixes confirmed information with speculation. Here, the verified elements are the location, the nationality of the passengers, the casualty totals and the fact that authorities closed the road for rescue operations.
For families, the crash would have immediate implications across borders, especially if the passengers were part of a group journey. For French responders, the case meant coordinating hospital transfers, traffic control and local authority communications while the cause remained under investigation. No wider explanation was supplied in the evidence packet, and the report does not attribute fault or mechanical failure.
The event date was 2025-06-13.
