At least 25 people were killed when a bus fell down a gorge in the mountains of northern India, police said on Wednesday (October 5th).
The vehicle, with around 45 people on board traveling to a wedding, was traveling on a dangerous mountain road in the state of Uttarakhand when the driver swerved causing the bus to fall 500 meters to the bottom a throat.
"
Twenty people have been rescued
," senior state police official Ashok Kumar told AFP.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured that "
all possible help
" would be given to the survivors.
"
In this tragic hour, my thoughts are with the bereaved families
," he said on Twitter on Wednesday.
11% of road deaths are Indians
Road accidents are frequent and deadly in the state of Uttarakhand, which crosses part of the Indian Himalayas and is home to many religious pilgrimage sites.
More than twenty pilgrims were killed in June when their bus fell to the bottom of a ravine.
They were traveling to a shrine dedicated to the Hindu deity Yamuna, north of the state capital, Dehradun.
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According to a World Bank report published last year, India accounts for 11% of the global number of road deaths, while it only accounts for 1% of the world's car fleet.
Road accidents kill about 150,000 people in India every year, or one person every four minutes, according to this report, and cost the Indian economy about $75 billion a year.