Pressmen "offered millions for Kaprun horror photos"

It said five million schillings (363,000 euros - 308,000 dollars) in cash was offered to a lieutenant of the Austrian army to take a single picture of the horrific scene in the Kitzsteinhorn tunnel where 155 people died in the November 11 train inferno.

The lieutenant firmly resisted the temptation, said the Kurier, quoting information from the Austrian Army Office of Photography and Films (HBF). The prices of the dubious international press fraternity had gone up since last year, said the paper.

An Austrian soldier in rescue and salvage work after the Galtuer avalanche disaster in Tyrol in February 1999 had been offered "only" 100,000 marks (50,800 euros - 43,200 dollars) for a picture. Like the lieutenant, the soldier at Galtuer turned down the offer. But the sensationalist press was not one to give up easily, said the Kurier.

At Kaprun, pressmen tried to get a list of the names of army and police salvage workers by pretending to be relatives of victims, shaking hands with soldiers to thank them personally for their efforts. The wife of a Kaprun salvage worker received a phone call warning her that her husband should be "cooperative".

Head of the Austrian army press department Herbert Kullnig said that in future there would be more army security and undercover staff at disaster scenes. He added that when the HBF took its own authorized pictures and distributed them throughout the world free of charge, the bottom dropped out of the market.

No one was willing to pay millions for a clandestine photo any more. The journalistic seekers of fortune quickly left the scene of a disaster. In the first few days after the Kaprun disaster, up to 500 Austrian and international journalists and television camera crews besieged the Alpine village. Local authorities said most of the journalists behaved well.

But in one incident, two were arrested for trying to get into the mountain tunnel before the bodies had been recovered. Their film was confiscated.

In another, local residents were angered by a German television crew floodlighting a hostel where relatives of victims were staying.

(la/dpa)