MEXICO CITY — A bus crash in central Mexico left at least 19 people dead and six others seriously injured, the Mexican Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.
The ministry said the bus was carrying 29 passengers, both adults and children, from the Sinaloa state capital Culiacan to Guadalajara, the state’s main city. It was traveling in heavy rain when it skidded off the road. It overturned before landing in a ravine.
Authorities initially said 28 people were aboard the bus.
The driver was being held for questioning. There was no information on whether or not he was being cooperative.
The ministry said in a statement that officials had started an investigation into the crash.
The number of fatalities increased early Tuesday when another bus hit a tarp covering part of a fence. That accident, which occurred near the small city of Puebla, killed at least seven people, the Veracruz state attorney general’s office said.
Images from the scene showed the bus apparently upside down and blocking a highway. Mexican news outlet Excelsior said all four people were sitting on the roof.
Aided by speed, rain and a curve, the bus overturned when it hit the plastic wall covering a fence on a stretch of road in Puebla. Emergency services secured the area for several hours before allowing traffic to resume.
The victims are members of the same family that was among 43 who died after a bus they were traveling in crashed and caught fire last year, Mexico’s official national office of statistics said.
Most of the victims in the separate bus accident that occurred shortly before nightfall were traveling back to the city of Hermosillo, also in Sinaloa state, according to the state’s Attorney General’s Office.
At least 22 people died when the bus they were traveling in toppled over on a rural road in Sinaloa, and rescuers had to dig them out of the mud and open the wreckage, the government of the state said.
Tens of thousands of people have died in Mexico’s cartel-related violence since 2006. Some 19,000 homicides have been registered in Sinaloa state alone, according to government data.
Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/world/americas/at-least-19-killed-in-bus-crash-in-central-mexico.html
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