At least 46 people were killed when a bus tumbled down a cliff onto a rocky beach along a narrow stretch of road known as the “Devil’s Curve,” Peruvian police and fire officials said.
The bus was carrying 57 passengers to Lima, Peru’s capital when it was struck by a tractor trailer shortly before noon and plunged down the slope, said Claudia Espinoza from Peru’s voluntary firefighter brigade on Tuesday.
The blue bus came to rest upside down on a narrow strip of shore next to the Pacific, the lifeless bodies of passengers strewn among the rocks.
“There is a large number of fatal victims,” Col Dino Escudero told RPP radio.
Rescuers were working to pull victims from the hard-to-reach area in Pasamayo, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) north of Lima.
Espinoza said, no road leads directly to the beach, complicating rescue efforts, though police and firefighters managed to transport five survivors with serious injuries to a nearby hospital.
Traffic accidents along Peru’s roadways are common. More than 2,600 people killed in 2016. More than three dozen died when three buses and a truck collided in 2015 on the main costal highway. At least twenty people were killed in November when a bus plunged off a bridge into a river in the southern Andes.
Espinoza said there were many passengers in Tuesday’s crash who were returning to Lima after celebrating the New Year’s holiday with family outside the city.
The highway is narrow, often shrouded in mist and curves along a cliff that has seen numerous accidents. It is known as the Devil’s Curve.
> Shiuly Akter
