Bus Falls Off Bridge: 37 Dead in India

Indian rescue officials and bystanders gather around the wreckage of a bus after it fell from a bridge at Khed, some 350 kilometers (220 miles) south of Mumbai on March 19, 2013. (STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images)

A bus fell off a bridge in western India on Tuesday, killing 37. Reports said the bus smashed into the bridge’s guard rail before it fell.

The private bus departed Goa and was en route to Mumbai when it fell off a bridge and into a river near Khed on the Mumbai-Goa highway, reported NDTV. More than 15 people were injured in the incident, including the driver.  

“There is a possibility that the driver fell asleep. The process to identify the deceased passengers is on,” Nandkumar Thakur, a police superintendent, told the Hindustan Times.

Mahendra Singh Pardesi, the head of a local police station, told AFP: “It is unclear whether the driver was drunk.”

There were some foreigners on the bus, including a Russian national, who was rescued, the station reported.

“Three cranes were used along with gas cutters to rescue the injured who trapped in the wreckage. We are monitoring the health conditions of the injured,” local official Rajiv Jadhav told the paper.

The bodies of those who were killed were not yet identified.

India’s National Crime Records Bureau said that in 2011, around 110,000 people were killed in road accidents, averaging around 300 per day, according to AFP.