19 killed in bus mishap in Siberia

Moscow, December 1

A passenger bus today plunged off a bridge onto a frozen river in Siberia, killing 19 of the more than 40 people on board, authorities said.

A tyre on the bus burst as it was crossing the bridge over the Kuenga river in eastern Siberia’s Zabaikalsky region.

The vehicle, which was travelling from Sretensk to Chita and carried 40 passengers, skidded off the road and onto the ice. “Nineteen people died and 21 received injuries,” the office of the governor of the Zabaikalsky region said in a statement.

Two preschool-aged children were reportedly among the dead.

National television broadcast footage of the mangled wreckage of the bus, which lay upside down on the snow-covered ice surrounded by ambulances and fire engines.

Nineteen people including a 12-year-old girl were hospitalised. — AFP