An overcrowded passenger bus has skidded off a cliff in Sri Lanka, killing 21 people and injuring at least 24 others.
The accident – among the deadliest recorded in Sri Lanka for decades – occurred in the early hours of Sunday in a mountainous area near the town of Kotmale, about 86 miles east of the capital Colombo.
The state-owned bus was carrying around 70 passengers – about 20 more than its capacity – when the driver lost control and it veered off the road before dawn, police said.
‘We are trying to establish whether it was a mechanical failure or if the driver fell asleep at the wheel,’ a local police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Deputy Transport Minister Prasanna Gunasena explained at the scene that the injured were rushed to two area hospitals. Reports have claimed the bus was carrying dozens of Buddhist pilgrims.
‘Twenty-one have died and we are trying to identify the victims,’ Gunasena added.
The toll could have been higher, the minister said, if not for local residents helping pull the injured from the mangled wreckage and rushing them to hospital.
Images of the disaster showed the bus lying overturned at the bottom of a precipice while workers and others helped remove injured people from the rubble.
The accident occurred in the early hours of Sunday in a mountainous area near the town of Kotmale, about 86 miles east of the capital Colombo
Images of the disaster showed the bus lying overturned at the bottom of a precipice while workers and others helped remove injured people from the rubble
The roof and side panels of the bus were sheared off, and more than half the seats were ripped from the floor of the vehicle, which landed wheels up into a tea plantation.
The driver was injured and among those admitted to hospital.
One survivor told a local journalist that he had been in the front section of the bus and was lucky to have escaped with only minor injuries.
‘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,’ said the unnamed man.
The bus was travelling from the pilgrim town of Kataragama in the island’s deep south to the central city of Kurunegala, a distance of about 155 miles.
Deadly bus accidents are common in Sri Lanka, especially in the mountainous regions, often due to reckless driving and poorly maintained and narrow roads.
Sri Lanka records an average of 3,000 road fatalities annually, making the island’s roads among the most dangerous in the world.
Sunday’s bus accident was one of the worst in Sri Lanka since April 2005, when a driver attempted to beat a train at a level crossing in the town of Polgahawela.
The bus driver escaped with minor injuries, but 37 passengers were killed.
And in March 2021, 13 passengers and the driver of a privately owned bus died when the vehicle crashed into a precipice in Passara, about 100 kilometres east of the scene of the accident on Sunday.
The driver was injured and among those admitted to hospital
The roof and side panels of the bus were sheared off, and more than half the seats were ripped from the floor of the vehicle, which landed wheels up into a tea plantation
The devastating incident comes after a tourist died when she fell from a train while hanging her head out of the carriage in Sri Lanka.
Olga Perminova, 53, was travelling on the legendary Podi Menike rail line when she decided to lean out of an open door in a deadly picture opportunity in February.
According to local reports, the woman smashed into a rock and suffered horrific head injuries, after holding onto two rails and hanging her head from the carriage.
Also in February, a young British influencer on the ‘holiday of a lifetime’ in Sri Lanka was one of two guests to suddenly die after reportedly being poisoned by pesticides used to kill bed bugs at the backpackers hostel where they were staying.
Ebony McIntosh, 24, from Derby, was just four days into her dream trip to the tropical island when she was rushed to hospital on Saturday along with other guests and treated for vomiting, nausea and breathing difficulties.
But within hours of arriving at the hospital, Ebony and another German guest, who had the same symptoms, both died.
Reports in Sri Lanka suggested that Ebony and the unnamed German woman may have been poisoned by noxious pesticides intended to treat bed bugs in an adjacent room 72 hours before she collapsed. (Mail Online)