At least 20 people were killed Friday when a passenger bus skidded off a highway and plunged into a river in south-central Nepal, local police said.
Seventeen passengers were injured in the crash which occurred early Friday after the bus veered off the road and rolled about 100 metres downhill into a swollen river, said police superintendent Basanta Kunwar. He said there were about 40 passengers on the bus, which was en route to Pokhara, a tourist town in western Nepal, from Gaur in the southeastern plains. The injured were being treated in a hospital in Chitwan district and a search-and-rescue operation was ongoing, he said.
Poorly maintained vehicles coupled with reckless driving and bad roads lead to numerous fatal road accidents in Nepal every year.
Last week, about thirty people were killed when a passenger bus crashed on a mountain road in central Nepal.