School bus catches fire on road during excursion: 20 children killed
The bodies of 20 children and three teachers have been found after a bus carrying schoolchildren crashed and caught fire outside Bangkok, authorities said. with the BBC.
The bus was returning to the capital of Thailand after a school excursion to the north of the country.
Witnesses said the bus crashed into a concrete barrier dividing a highway north of Bangkok after a front tire blew out. The bus quickly caught fire, trapping many of its occupants. The cause of the fire has yet to be determined.
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Video footage from the scene shows the bus engulfed in flames and huge clouds of thick black smoke rising into the sky.
Footage taken shortly after the fatal crash shows the driver attempting to put out the fire, but he reportedly fled the scene shortly after.
The driver surrendered to police 100km north of Bangkok, local media reported. Nineteen children and three teachers were reported to have survived, XNUMX of whom are in hospital with injuries.
Thailand's Transport Minister Suryahe Juangroongruangkit said the bus was running on "extremely dangerous" compressed natural gas.
"This is a tragic incident," Mr Suryahe told reporters at the scene. "The ministry should find a way to ban the use of this type of fuel for such passenger vehicles because it is extremely risky."
Piyalak Tinkaew, who led the rescue efforts, said the bodies were difficult to identify because they were so badly burned.
"Some of the bodies we found were very, very small," he told reporters at the scene, noting that the fire had started at the front of the bus.
"The instinct of the children was to run away from the fire to the back of the bus, so the bodies of the dead were there," he said.
Forensic police said of the 23 bodies found, XNUMX were male, seven were female and five were unidentifiable.
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The ages of the children on board remain unclear, but the school accepts students aged between three and 15.
Thailand has one of the worst road safety records in the world, with unsafe vehicles and poor driving resulting in an estimated 20 deaths a year.
Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said an investigation was underway.
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