INQUESTS have been opened today into the deaths of the seven people killed in the M5 crash at Taunton.

The court in the town's Old Municipal Building heard that the bodies had been taken to Flax Bourton for post mortems carried out by three Home Office pathologists.

West Somerset Coroner Michael Rose gave permission for the bodies to be released so that funerals can be held.

The inquest was told that the cause of death of Terence Peter Brice, 55, of Patchway, Bristol, a passenger in a Ginsters articulated lorry, and the driver of another lorry Kye Thomas, 38, of Gunnislake, Cornwall, was still unascertained.

Michael Edwin Barton, 67, from Windsor, died from chest injuries.

He was a back seat passenger in a car driven by his daughter Emma's fiance.

His other daughter, Valerie Margaret Rose Barton, 30, who had been sitting beside her father, died from neck, chest and abdominal injuries.

Malcolm Stanley Beacham, 46, died from a head injury. He had been to the Holiday Inn, Taunton, with his wife and daughter who left in a different car.

Anthony Adams, 73, and his wife, Pamela Dorothy Adams, 70, both of Newport, had been in Taunton visiting their daughter. The cause of their deaths is unascertained at this moment.

Mr Rose he hopes to resume the inquests within six months.