At least 25 people have died when a bus plunged into a valley in northern India’s mountains, police said on Wednesday.
A bus carrying about 45 people on its way to a wedding party was driving along a bumpy mountain road in Uttarakhand province when the driver swerved, causing the bus to fall 500 meters into the bottom of a cliff. “Twenty people were rescued,” district police spokesman Ashok Kumar told AFP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured the survivors that “all-round assistance” would be provided: “At this tragic moment, Bali is with grieving families,” he tweeted on Wednesday.
Fatal traffic accidents are frequent in the province of Uttarakhand, which traverses part of the Indian Himalayas and is home to many religious pilgrimage sites.
More than twenty pilgrims died last June when a bus plunged into the bottom of a ravine on its way to a shrine dedicated to the Hindu deity Yamuna, north of the provincial capital of Dehradun. According to a World Bank report released last year, India accounts for 11% of the world’s total road traffic deaths, while accounting for only 1% of the global car fleet. According to this report, traffic accidents in India kill about 150,000 people every year, averaging one death every four minutes, and cost the Indian economy an estimated $75 billion annually.
