48 dead after bus careens off cliff in Peru

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The death toll from a bus accident in Peru has risen to 48, a police statement said on Tuesday, after the vehicle plunged off a cliff following a collision with a truck.

The incident ‘left at least 48 victims’ dead, the statement posted on the Interior Ministry’s website said, revising earlier tolls of at least 25 dead, and then 36.

There were 53 passengers on board.

The accident took place on the Panamericana Norte highway near the area of Pasamayo on the Pacific coast, the ministry said on Twitter. Six people survived the crash and were being treated for injuries while the government rushed emergency medical services to the site.

‘From the first moment I arranged all immediate support for the rescue of the victims in this emergency,’ president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski tweeted.

‘It’s a dangerous curve zone,’ Colonel Dino Escudero, head of Lima’s highway control division, told local radio station RPP.

Source: New Age.