Twelve people died on the spot and five more were hospitalized as a bus overturned on a railway track in Brazil. The driver of the bus jumped out, police said.
The accident on Friday closed a section of the BR-381 route in Joao Monlaved, a municipality in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, 100 kilometers east of Belo Horizonte.
Video of the scene was shown by neighbors looking at the wreckage of the bus in a ravine at least 50 feet (15 meters) below the overpass.
Bus cae de un paso alifado en la ciudad de joo monlewade, en minas garais, brazil ગ sagan information preliminar, ha 11 murtoz y 29 heridos. pic.twitter.com/fFoFeb1S5l
– Mundo Informative @ (@ Noticias Update 1) December 4, 2020
Local hospitals were overcrowded, firefighters reported. Minas Gerais Civil Police said 11 people died on the spot and 29 were injured, three of whom later succumbed to their injuries. By Friday evening, officials had corrected the number to 17 people.
While the cause of the crash is still being investigated, police have cited it as a possibility of brake failure. The Brazilian daily Folha cited unconfirmed reports that the bus had collided with a truck.
Federal Highway Police spokesman Aristides Amaral Jr. told reporters that the driver jumped out of the bus before falling off the bridge. Police are now searching for him.
Joe Monlewade is a community of 80,000 inhabitants in the interior of Brazil, about 500 kilometers north of Rio de Janeiro.
However the people aboard the board were not locals. The bus belongs to a company called Lokalima Turismo and was carrying passengers from Mother Grande to Sao Paulo, a journey of about 2,300 kilometers, TV Globo reported.
The company operated under an emergency court order and the vehicle was in question “Not qualified to provide passenger transport service,” Brazil’s transport agency ANTT said.
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