A bus carrying foreign tourists including Ukrainians has crashed off an elevated street near the Italian city of Venice, killing at least 21 people and injuring 18 others, authorities said.
Four of the injured were in serious condition after the accident in the Mestre borough, on the mainland opposite the historic old city of Venice, said Renato Boraso, a Venice city official.
Two of the dead were children, Venice prefect Michele Di Bari said. He said the bus had dropped dozens of metres “and is completely crushed on itself.”
Mr Boraso confirmed that some of the victims were Ukrainian and said the bus was taking tourists to a camping site.
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Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro said the scene of the crash was “apocalyptic” and he had already declared the “city’s mourning” for the “numerous victims” on the bus.
According to local media, the bus fell a few metres before crashing close to Mestre’s railway tracks, where it caught fire. Emergency crews attended the scene and rescue workers were still trying to recover survivors and bodies from the wreckage late Tuesday.
Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, said on Italian television “the fire that exploded rather quickly” when the bus hit the tracks and that had aggravated the tragedy. “There could be” more bodies in the flames, he said.
The cause of the accident was unclear.
Italy has suffered a number of deadly bus crashes in recent years.
In 2017, 16 people on board a bus carrying Hungarian students died in an accident near the northern city of Verona, while in 2013, 40 people died when a bus plunged off a viaduct in southern Italy in one of the country’s worst road accidents.
- Wires