At least 21 folks had been killed and 24 injured Sunday when an overcrowded bus carrying Buddhist pilgrims plunged right into a ravine in Sri Lanka, in keeping with a senior transport official.
The island nation’s winding roads are among the many most harmful on the earth and the crash off a cliffside highway Sunday was among the many deadliest recorded in Sri Lanka in a long time.
The roof and facet panels of the bus had been sheared off and greater than half the seats had been ripped from the ground of the automobile, which landed wheels up right into a tea plantation, images of the wreckage confirmed.
The state-owned bus was carrying round 70 passengers – about 20 greater than its capability – by means of the central hilly area of Kotmale when the driving force misplaced management and it veered off the highway earlier than daybreak, police mentioned.
“We are trying to establish whether it was a mechanical failure or if the driver fell asleep at the wheel,” a neighborhood police official advised Agence France-Presse (AFP), talking anonymously as a result of he was not authorised to talk to the media.
Deputy Transport Minister Prasanna Gunasena advised reporters on the scene that the injured had been rushed to 2 of the realm hospitals.
“Twenty-one have died, and we are trying to identify the victims,” Gunasena mentioned.
The toll might have been larger, the minister added, if not for native residents serving to pull folks from the mangled wreckage and dashing them to the hospital.
Police mentioned 24 folks had been being handled within the two hospitals.
One survivor advised a neighborhood journalist that he had been within the entrance part of the bus and was fortunate to have escaped with solely minor accidents.
“The bus was leaning to the left side and as the driver was negotiating a bend, he lost control and it fell down the precipice,” mentioned the person, who didn’t give his title, in a video seen by AFP.
The bus was travelling from the pilgrim city of Kataragama within the island’s deep south to the central metropolis of Kurunegala, a distance of about 250 kilometers (155 miles).
Sri Lanka information a mean of three,000 highway fatalities yearly, making the island’s roads among the many most threatening on the earth.
Sunday’s bus accident was one of many worst within the nation since April 2005, when a driver tried to beat a practice at a stage crossing within the city of Polgahawela. The bus driver was evenly injured, however 37 passengers had been killed.
In March 2021, 13 passengers and the driving force of a privately owned bus died when the automobile crashed right into a precipice in Passara, about 100 kilometres east of the scene of the crash on Sunday.
Source: www.dailysabah.com