The island nation’s winding roads are among the most dangerous in the world, and the crash off a cliffside road on Sunday was among the deadliest recorded in Sri Lanka in decades.
The state-owned bus was carrying around 70 passengers -- about 20 more than its capacity -- through the central hilly region of Kotmale when the driver lost control and it veered off the road before dawn, police said.
Deputy Transport Minister Prasanna Gunasena told reporters at the scene that the injured were rushed to two area hospitals.
The toll could have been higher, the minister added, if not for local residents helping pull people from the mangled wreckage and rushing them to hospital.
One survivor told a local journalist that he had been in the front section of the bus and was lucky to have escaped with only minor injuries.
The bus was travelling from the pilgrim town of Kataragama in the island’s deep south to the central city of Kurunegala, a distance of about 250 kilometres (155 miles).
Sunday’s bus accident was one of the worst in the country since April 2005 when a driver attempted to beat a train at a level crossing in the town of Polgahawela. The bus driver was lightly injured, but 37 passengers were killed.
In March 2021, 13 passengers and the driver of a privately owned bus died when the vehicle crashed into a precipice in Passara, about 100 kilometres east of the scene of the crash on Sunday.
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