Death toll in south India road mishap climbs to 20

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NEW DELHI, Feb 20, 2020 (BSS/XINHUA) – The death toll in Thursday’s road mishap
in south India’s Tamil Nadu state has climbed up to 20, a local
administration official told Xinhua over phone.

The mishap, involving a bus and a truck, happened at around 3:30 a.m. local
time in Avinashi area of Tiruppur district of the state. One of the tyres of
the bus burst, as a result of which the driver lost control and the vehicle
rammed into a truck coming from the opposite direction. Both the vehicles
were said to be in high speed.

The bus belonged to the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation. Kerala is
another south Indian state adjacent to Tamil Nadu. The bus was going from
Bengaluru city (capital of southern state of Karnataka) to Kerala’s
Ernakulam.

Most of the passengers in the ill-fated bus belonged to Kerala.

“We have recovered 20 dead bodies, including 15 men and five women. There
were 48 passengers in the bus. The rest 28 have been injured, four of them
seriously. All the injured have been admitted in a local hospital,” an
administration official told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, Kerala Transport Minister A.K. Saseendran said that senior
officials from Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) had rushed to
the site. KSRTC’s managing director will conduct an inquiry and submit
report, he said.