M5 crash horror leaves four dead and woman and her two kids fighting for their lives after lorry ploughs into oncoming traffic

A mother and her two children are fighting for their lives and their father is among the four people who died after a lorry smashed through the central reservation on the M5 in south Gloucestshire, England.

Officers said a lorry travelling southbound towards Bristol on Saturday afternoon hit at least two vehicles heading the opposite way near Almondsbury in south Gloucestershire just before 2.30pm. Motorists at the scene quickly went to the aid of crash victims to pull them from burning cars and administer first aid to the injured.

One witness told Mail Online that he pulled an unconscious woman from a badly mangled vehicle while two men at the scene rescued screaming children, believed to be aged seven and nine.

The witness who asked not to be named told Mail Online: "The father was dead, I crawled into the car and checked his pulse. I pulled the woman, who I believe is a doctor, out of the car and she was given two pints of blood on the side of the road before she was taken to hospital. The woman and the children are in a critical condition."

The witness, who was one of the first people at the scene, had been driving "four or five vehicles" behind the silver car in which three people and a dog are believed to have died. 

"It was like watching a video of a car explosion in Iraq. There was a loud bang and suddenly there were car parts and dust flying everywhere."

The bang was from the blown tyres of a lorry which then collided with a black car and both the car and the lorry then careened over the central reservation and into the northbound carriageway where they collided with a silver vehicle, according to the witness. He said that paramedics happened to passing and stopped at the scene.

"The paramedics were amazing, the lorry driver's legs were badly trapped in the cab of his lorry but they got him out and he walked away while his wife was brought away, alive but on a stretcher."

The lorry driver survived and was taken to hospital to be checked over, which police said was as a precaution. The witness said that the scene was truly shocking and he is so scarred by the accident that he might have to stop working.

"I am affected to the point that I might quit my job. I can understand adults dying but to see children injured and screaming, knowing they had lost their father, it's awful."

Cardiologist Dr Amer Hamed was in a car seconds behind the crash when it happened.  He, along with a passing GP, was one of the first at the scene to help an injured woman who was in one of the cars.

Dr Hamed told the BBC: "There was a lorry involved and at least two other cars. One was absolutely destroyed and another had flipped over. People are helping as much as they can. Several people offered us water and one man came out of his car to give food. We're going to be stuck here for a few hours yet."