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Rescuers reported that a bus in Guatemala City went through a guardrail on a bridge and fell into a gorge, killing at least 51 people.
The bus was carrying around 70 people when it fell off a bridge into an effluent-contaminated river, and the municipal fire service reported that 51 people’s bodies had been recovered from the debris.
According to Volunteer Firefighters spokesperson Victor Gomez, who was part of the rescue attempt, there were “51 bodies in the provisional mortuary.”
Ten injured persons have already been pulled from the wreckage by rescuers.
Bernardo Arevalo, the president of Guatemala, announced an indeterminate time of national mourning and expressed his sadness at the incident.
“Today is a difficult day for the Guatemalan nation,” he stated.
According to the fire department, the bus’s driver lost control, slammed into several small cars, and then fell off the cliff.
Carlos Hernandez of the department told reporters, “The bus continued to travel, broke through a metal railing, and fell into a ravine about 20 metres (65 feet) deep until it reached the sewage-contaminated river.”
Images from AFPTV showed lines of firefighters carrying bodies up the slope on stretchers after being dragged from the trash-filled, murky waters.
The bus was heading to Guatemala City from the hamlet of San Agustin Acasaguastlan in the El Progreso department, which is roughly 90 kilometres (56 miles) to the northeast, according to the local media.
Communications Minister Miguel Angel Diaz said an initial check indicated that the bus was 30 years old but still had a license to run.
He claimed that the cause of the early morning tragedy was yet unknown and that authorities were looking into whether the vehicle was overcrowded with people.
In Central and South America, traffic accidents frequently result in dozens of fatalities.
A bus in Peru went off a cliff onto a beach north of the capital Lima in January 2018, killing fifty-two persons.
In March 2015, a tourist bus catastrophe in the southern state of Santa Catarina, Brazil, claimed the lives of 54 people.
