Police are investigating a bouncy castle accident with five seriously injured children in the Hunsrück district

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Police officers remove the shell of a bouncy castle after the accident in Gondershausen

Photo: Thomas Frey / dpa

The Rhineland-Palatinate police are investigating after an accident with a bouncy castle because of negligent bodily harm.

According to a statement, nine children were injured, five of them seriously.

Accordingly, there were several children in the bouncy castle at a football tournament in Gondershausen in the Hunsrück district on Saturday.

According to initial investigations, the castle was caught by the wind and pulled into the air.

The children fell from a height of four to five meters.

Four of the five seriously injured children were taken to clinics by helicopter.

No information was available about the nature of the injuries.

Attempts are currently being made to reconstruct the course of the accident, the police said.

The officers secured the bouncy castle.

There were more than a hundred visitors at the event.

There have been several accidents involving bouncy castles in recent months:

• At the beginning of the year, two children died in Spain when wind ripped a bouncy castle off its hinges.

• At the end of last year, six children died in a similar accident in Australia.

  The children had fallen up to ten meters to the ground after an inflated bouncy castle was caught in a gust of wind and lifted into the air.

jpz/dpa