About 30 people died Sunday evening in central Kenya after a passenger bus fell off a bridge, a local official said on Monday.
The bus fell from a height of about forty meters into the Niti River while crossing an often-damaged bridge about fifty kilometers from the city of Meru, from where it was heading towards Mombasa in the south-east of the country. About twenty people died on the spot, four more died in the hospital, and six bodies were removed from the river on Monday morning, Norbert Komura, a spokesman for the Taraka-Niti district, said. “Search work continues, we are trying to restore the wreckage of the bus (…) and investigations are ongoing to find out the causes of the accident,” he added.
Photographs published by local media show the damaged bus and seats thrown from its structure. The number of victims of road traffic accidents has been rising for several years. Between January and June, 1,912 people were killed compared to 1,754 during the same period the previous year, up 9%, according to the latest figures released by the Transportation and Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
