Wednesday, January 3, 2018
At least 48 people has been killed when a bus tumbled down a cliff onto a rocky beach, Peruvian police and fire officials said.
Travelling through a narrow stretch of highway known as the “Devil’s Curve” was carrying 57 passengers to Peru‘s capital when it was struck by a tractor trailer shortly before noon on Tuesday.
The Ministry of the Interior said the bodies were found in the bus, the Pacific Ocean and on the rocky beach.
Six people were hospitalized with injuries.
The preliminary investigation indicated that GPS showed both vehicles were going too fast, a tweet from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said. More than 100 firefighters rushed to the crash scene to rescue the situation.
Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said in a statement that it is very sad for them as a country to suffer an accident of this magnitude.
Rescuers struggled to pull out victims from the hard-to-reach area in Pasamayo, about 40 miles north of Lima. Since there are no direct roads which lead to the beach, the rescue mission was all the more difficult, although police and firefighters managed to transport six survivors with serious injuries to nearby hospitals by helicopter.
Peru’s roadways have seen traffic accidents before this as well; in 2016 more than 2600 people were killed in a ghastly accident.
The passengers in Tuesday’s crash included many returning to Lima after celebrating the New Year’s holiday with family outside the city. President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski tweeted his solidarity with relatives of the victims of the crash and called it a “tragic accident.”
Friday, March 31, 2023
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