At least 32 killed and 13 injured as bus crashes in Maharashtra

The bus was carrying passengers from the Goa to Mumbai when it fell off a bridge. 

 

A BUS crash left 32 people dead and another 13 injured after the vehicle careered off a bridge over a river in India's western state of Maharashtra. 

"The bus was travelling from Goa to Mumbai when the driver suddenly lost control,'' an officer in the police control room told AFP.
The pre-dawn accident happened in the Khed area of Ratnagiri district, around 350 kilometres south of Mumbai.
Most of the injured, including the driver, sustained head and arm injuries and were undergoing treatment at a local hospital, said the officer.
Images from the scene showed the bus lying on its roof next to a bridge. The vehicle had landed on a dried-up patch of land next to low-lying water.

Rescue workers and bystanders gather around the wreckage of the bus at Khed, south of Mumbai. 

 

Media reports said there were some foreign tourists on the bus, but there was no immediate confirmation from the police.
About 110,000 people were killed in Indian road accidents in 2011 - more than 300 every day - according to the last available statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau.
The World Health Organization's global status report on road safety 2013 found that eight per cent of India's road user deaths were drivers or passengers of buses, while 32 per cent were riders of motorbikes or three-wheelers.