Most of those who died were weekend skiers, many of them children.

The cable train was in a steep, narrow underground tunnel nearly two miles (3km) long which carries skiers up Mount Kitzsteinhorn in the ski resort of Kaprun, south of Salzburg.

It was less than half a mile (600 metres) inside the tunnel when fire broke out.

The cause is not yet known, although there has been speculation it may have been due to an electrical fault.

Tourist victims

A press spokeswoman for the Kaprun resort told journalists: "We believe German, British and Americans were among the dead, but no names or nationalities can yet be confirmed."

Just eight people escaped from the train after a German man managed to smash a rear window with a ski pole.

Because they were at the back of the train and escaped downwards, they avoided the poisonous smoke rushing upwards through the tunnel.

One of the survivors gave a harrowing account of the scene inside the train.

"People were crying and screaming in fear for their lives," he said.

"They tried to tear open the closed doors and smash the windows. I only managed to save myself in the last seconds because a window had been kicked in."

'Explosion'

Peter Johnson, an American holidaymaker waiting with his wife at the bottom of the mountain to catch the next train, described seeing a cable snap and fly up into the air a few feet away from him.

"Everyone ran away from the station, and then there was this massive explosion, like when they dynamite a mountain, or like an avalanche," he said.

Rescuers said the narrowness and steepness of the tunnel transformed it into a giant chimney, sucking in air which fuelled the flames.

Soon after the fire broke out, smoke surged into the station at the top of the tunnel with such intensity that three people waiting there were also killed.

The fire in the tunnel was so fierce that when rescuers finally reached the site only the train's twisted metal base remained.

Austrian police said it could be up to two weeks before the dead are identified.

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