Gotthard police find no more bodies

More than 100 people have been reported missing, but after peering into the twisted and melted remains of the cars in the tunnel, police think all of them may have escaped.

"We now believe there are no other dead," a police spokesman said.

Officials emphasised on Thursday that the number of people on the missing list - the result of phone calls from concerned relatives - could be misleading.

They pointed out that families did not always inform the authorities when their loved ones turned up safe and sound.

However, they said on Friday that a special victim identification team would not begin work into the tunnel until Monday.

The number of missing fell from 128 on Thursday to 113 on Friday.

Vehicles welded together

The authorities are hoping that most of those in the vicinity of the lorry collision that caused the blaze were able to escape via a service tunnel, sealed off from the smoke and fumes by fire doors.

Earlier there had been fears that dozens of the missing people could have stayed in their cars, dying as temperatures rose to 1,000C and the tunnel's roof fell in.

Most of the dead whose bodies have been found are thought to have suffocated.

BBC correspondent James Coomarasamy, reporting from inside the tunnel, said that one of the lorries had been turned into a wreck of twisted material, and that cars had been welded together into a lump of metal by the intense heat.

Click here for a diagram of the tunnel fire

Rescue workers moved inch by inch towards the source of the blaze, because of the risk that more of the tunnel's roof could collapse.

Officials earlier estimated that between 20 and 30 vehicles were trapped in the 200 metre section closest to heart of the blaze.

However, they knew that some of those travelling in these vehicles had escaped.

Road chaos

Firefighters worked round the clock to douse the flames.

Crash victims
4 Germans
1 French
1 Luxembourger
1 Italian
1 Swiss
3 unknown

By Thursday night, as smoke continued to pour from the tunnel, they allowed the remaining fires to burn themselves out.

On Friday morning they said the fires were under control.

The closure of the Gotthard tunnel, the main route through the Alps from Germany to Italy, has caused chaos for road transport.

Italian hauliers have called on their government to appeal to Austria to lift a restriction on lorries using the Brenner tunnel, claiming the country risked economic paralysis.

And a spokesman for the International Road Transport Union, Guy Willis, called on Friday for the earliest possible opening of the Mont Blanc tunnel, which was closed after a fire that killed 39 people in 1999.

Experts say the Gotthard tunnel is likely to remain closed for several months.

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