Top Uruguayan Soccer Player Loses Leg

The shattered right leg of top Uruguayan soccer player Dario Silva was amputated after he was thrown from his car in a highway accident, hospital officials said yesterday. The 33-year-old forward, a member of the national team, was driving along a Montevideo road that fronts the River Plate Estuary early Sunday when his car struck a light post on a center divider, police said. He hurtled through a side window, and his right leg was caught and badly broken as the light post toppled over the car, authorities said.

The Asociacion Espanola clinic said Silva remained under heavy sedation after the amputation. Authorities said Silva was accompanied by two former players — Dardo Pereira, 34, was not injured, and Elbio Papa, 40, was slightly injured and had to be extricated from the car's twisted metal.