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A British family of twelve has been rescued by Italian police after following sat-nav directions into a river while on holiday.
Michael Sullivan, accompanied by his wife Tania and their ten children, accidentally drove onto a dirt track, perilously close to the fast-flowing waterway while attempting to reach their holiday accommodation in the family minibus.
Raising the alarm on his mobile phone, Michael Sullivan was quickly traced by Italian police, though it still took more than three hours for help to arrive due to the remote location in which they had become stuck.
The family ended up in their predicament after father Michael blindly followed the sat-nav's instructions, despite driving for several miles on an unsurfaced dirt track, eventually arriving at the banks of the swollen river.
Attempting to reverse out of danger, the 40-year old dad managed to get the minibus's tyres stuck in the mud.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, he said: "Looking back at it now it was quite funny but at the time it was quite scary as we didn't know how we were going to get out of there.
"We had just done ten miles of winding mountain roads which we were glad to see the back off when the sat nav told us to turn back on ourselves which I thought was odd but I did as it said and we ended up going down quite a steep track.
"It was all cut up and littered with rocks - it certainly wasn't a road - and at the end was this river which was going quite quick and that's when I knew something wasn't quite right and I started to get worried as didn't know how we would get out."
The family were eventually rescued when authorities turned up in two 4x4 vehicles and simply towed them to safety.