Kane Dane
Police and rescuers said Tuesday that a bus fell into a valley on Indonesia’s Sumatra island after its brakes failed, killing at least 28 people and injuring 13 people on the bus.
The accident happened just before midnight on Monday on a winding street in South Sumatra province’s Pagaralam district.
Palembang search and rescue operation chief Berty Kowaas said that the dead and the injured bodies were transported to a hospital for identification.
The local police chief Dolly Gumara said that one of the injured was in a critical condition.
Gumara said that the bus fell into an 80-meter (262-foot) -deep ravine and smashed into a fast-flowing river after the driver lost control of the bus in a region with several sharp declines.
Survivors told officials that the bus’s brakes apparently failed, but police were still investigating the origin of the accident, Gumara said.
The bus was going for the provincial capital of Palembang from the neighboring city of Bengkulu.
Kowaas stated that the search for other passengers who might have been drawn away by the river was paused because of darkness, and the search would be resumed on Wednesday morning.
The capacity of the vehicles was 52 passengers, but the number of passengers on board was undetermined. The driver and two crew of the bus were among those killed.
As Indonesia has poor rood safety standards and infrastructure, road accidents are common in Indonesia.
