NINE tourists visiting Biblical sites in Jordan may have died because the tyres on their holiday coach were worn, an inquest heard yesterday.

The nine - members of a group of 18 from Britain - died when a four-year-old tyre, which is believed to have been retreaded, blew out.

Three Jordanians also died - the driver of the coach and the driver and passenger of a pick-up truck that was hit by the bus as it careered across the opposite carriageway.

Another tyre on the same coach had lost its tread less than an hour before the tragedy on October 28, 2004, on a desert highway near the ancient city of Petra.

Among those who died were Owen and Jean Dale, 66 and 63, of Dunnington, York; Hilda Brisby, 80, of Hansom Place, York; and Margaret Haslam, of Stockton Lane, York, the 70-year-old wife of trip organisor, retired Methodist minister Graham Haslam, who survived.

Also among those who died were Richard Fothergill, 67, and his wife Angela, 65, from Brunson Park, Newcastle.

York coroner Donald Coverdale was told the dead had all been sitting near the front of the coach as it travelled along the dual-carriageway from Wadi Rum to Mount Nebo.

The bus was travelling at about 90kmh - below the 100kmh limit - when the tyre blew. Within seconds, it had ploughed across the gully of the central reservation, collided with a Toyota pick-up truck, flipped on to its side and slid into the desert.

Passenger Roger Brown, of Dunnington, York, survived the crash.

He described how he heard the explosion as the tyre burst and, in the seconds before the smash, saw the driver struggling to control the coach.

"The poor man could have done no more than he did," he said.

The managing director of Kent tour company Pilgrim Travel UK Phil Lynes said the coach was owned by Jordanian company Jett, one of three in the country licensed to carry tourists.

Two experts later told Jordanian investigators the accident was the result of excessive wear to the tyre.

North Yorkshire accident expert PC Graham McCulloch examined photos and reports from the scene said that while the tread would have passed an MoT test in the UK, the age of the tyre - it was made in July 2000 - and the hot conditions in which it operated, would have put it beyond its useful life.

Mr Coverdale recorded a "narrative" verdict, in which the facts of the case only are recorded.