A bus accident followed by a fire, which President Lula described as a “terrible tragedy”, left at least 38 dead on Saturday in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais (southeast), police announced.
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It is the worst road accident in the country since 2007, according to police data cited by the Brazilian press.
In the latest official report, the police confirmed “38 dead”. Nine people are hospitalized in serious condition.
Among those killed were the bus driver and at least one child, noted firefighters, who needed a crane to remove the charred bodies.
They had previously specified that there were thirteen survivors, who were taken care of by the emergency services.
The bus was traveling on the highway linking São Paulo (southeast) to Vitória da Conquista, in the state of Bahia (northeast).
The federal police indicated, in a press release, that according to “preliminary information and traces found at the scene”, a large block of granite “probably” fell from the dumpster of a truck traveling in the opposite direction and struck the the bus, which immediately caught fire.
Another car then hit the back of the truck and its three occupants were evacuated with “serious injuries”.
“I send my prayers to the families of the more than thirty victims of the accident in Teófilo Otoni, Minas Gerais,” posted President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on his social networks. “I pray for the recovery of the survivors of this terrible tragedy.”
The governor of Minas Gerais state said he was working “so that the families of the victims are taken care of in order to face this tragedy in the most humane way possible, on the eve of Christmas.”
Firefighters initially said they had fought the flames and saved 22 bodies, then they revised the death toll upwards after accessing another part of the bus using a crane.
A fire department spokeswoman told AFP by telephone that it was difficult to establish an exact count of victims “because of the state of the bodies.”
Brazil is the third country in the world for the number of road deaths, after India and China, according to the World Health Organization's Road Safety Status Report 2023.
In late November, a bus accident in the northeastern state of Alagoas killed 17 people when the vehicle plunged into a ravine while traveling on a mountain road.
