London Evening Standard/London

A man was killed and 13 people injured when a car involved in a suspected high-speed road race smashed into a night bus early yesterday. The driver of the Audi was killed and another man, a front-seat passenger, was fighting for his life in hospital.

Two other passengers in the car were also seriously hurt while 10 people on the N38 bus suffered cuts and bruises in the crash in east London.

The bus, a new double-decker Routemaster, was travelling towards Whipps Cross when the accident happened in Lea Bridge Road, at the junction with Essex Wharf outside the Lea Valley Ice Centre.

Police are investigating reports that two cars were racing each other at high speed when the accident took place. The blue Audi is thought to have been driving on the wrong side of the road when it crashed into the bus, whose driver had veered on to a grass bank in a bid to avoid the collision. All those in the Audi are said to be men aged in their early to mid-twenties.

The wrecked car lay across a central reservation next to traffic lights close to the ice centre early yesterday morning.

Fire crews called to the scene had to cut free the back seat passengers, who were trapped in the car.

The bus, with its destination of Walthamstow Central showing on the front, stood nearby, its right front corner crumpled and its left side angled into a grassy verge.

Rose Friggi, 32, a mother-of-two from nearby Paradise Park, said she had heard what sounded like an explosion.

She said: “I was up in the night because my baby was sick. I heard what sounded like an explosion. My husband went to work at about 3am and he said there were police cars and a helicopter at the scene.”

Said Mohamed, 52, a security guard at a Thames Water depot close to the scene, said his colleague heard an enormous crash just after 2am: “He said it was so loud. He went out to look at what had happened. The whole front of the car was almost underneath the bus and it was panic and chaos.

“There were injured people in the road and everyone was calling the emergency services. He said seeing it all was very difficult. A lot of people are hurt and the emergency services were trying to save the people in the car.

“There were police cars and ambulances everywhere. The car must have been coming in the opposite direction and must have lost control.”