Exchange program bus crash kills 13, injures 44 in Spain
Print Edition
THIRTEEN people were killed and 44 injured yesterday when a bus carrying foreign exchange students crashed in northeastern Spain, local authorities said.
All the dead were female, according to a regional government source who requested anonymity.
The students were on a European exchange programme in Catalonia and were from 16 different countries including Britain, Ukraine, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan and New Zealand, said regional government official Jordi Jane.
The casualties’ nationalities was not immediately known, said Jane, revising down an earlier death toll of 14.
The accident occurred just before 6am near the small town of Freginals, about 150 kilometres south of Barcelona as the bus was returning from a hugely popular traditional festival in the eastern city of Valencia.
The driver “hit the railing on the right and swerved to the left so violently that the bus veered onto the other side of the highway,” Jane said.
The bus then hit a car coming in the opposite direction, injuring two people inside, he added.
A photographer at the scene said many fire trucks were on site, as were three hearses and a heavy-lift crane.
The car’s front was smashed in, and the bus was lying on its side after the accident. The bus was carrying 57 people in all, including the driver.
Spain’s national radio station RNE spoke to the son of the owner of the company that chartered the bus, who said his father was driving another bus in front of the one that crashed — one of a total of five vehicles ferrying students back from Valencia.
Officials said in a statement that an initial probe revealed that “the bus driver tested negative for drugs and alcohol.”
The accident is one of the deadliest in Spain in recent years. In November 2014, 14 were people killed and 41 injured in a bus accident.
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