At least 38 people were killed in a bus crash in southeastern Brazil on Saturday, officials said, in what Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called a “terrible tragedy.”
The accident in Minas Gerais state, involving a bus that caught fire in the collision, was the worst on Brazil’s federal highways since 2007, the Brazilian Federal Highway Police (PRF) said.
Civil police confirmed 38 fatalities with nine people hospitalized.
Photo: Minas Gerais Fire Department via AFP
According to preliminary information, a block of granite “possibly” came off a truck traveling in the opposite direction, hitting the bus, the PRF said in a statement.
The truck driver fled the scene, firefighters said.
Firefighters had initially said the bus blew a tire at about 4:00am, causing the driver to lose control and hit a truck. Another vehicle also hit the bus from behind, but its occupants survived, officials said.
After the crash, the bus, which had been making its way from Sao Paulo to Vitoria da Conquista caught fire. The death toll crept upward throughout the day, with a spokeswoman for the local fire department earlier saying that “it was not yet possible to specify the exact number due to the state of the bodies.”
Some of the victims had been trapped inside, said the fire department, which removed charred remains from the wreckage.
In a video released on Saturday morning, Minas Gerais Fire Department Lieutenant Alonso Vieira Junior said a crane would be needed to clear the wreckage, and that “there are still more victims to be removed.”
Among the dead were the bus driver and at least one child.
Lula took to social media to offer his prayers for “the recovery of the survivors of this terrible tragedy.”
“I am deeply sorry,” he said, offering condolences to the families of the victims.
The governor of Minas Gerais said he was working “so that the families of the victims are cared for, to deal with this tragedy in the most humane way possible.”
At the end of last month, a bus accident in Brazil’s northeastern state of Alagoas left 17 dead when it plunged into a ravine while traveling on a remote mountain road.
Ukraine’s military intelligence agency and the Pentagon on Monday said that some North Korean troops have been killed during combat against Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk border region. Those are the first reported casualties since the US and Ukraine announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost three-year war. Ukraine’s military intelligence agency said that about 30 North Korean troops were killed or wounded during a battle with the Ukrainian army at the weekend. The casualties occurred around three villages in Kursk, where Russia has for four months been trying to quash a
SUPPORT: Elon Musk’s backing for the far-right AfD is also an implicit rebuke of center-right Christian Democratic Union leader Friedrich Merz, who is leading polls German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a swipe at Elon Musk over his political judgement, escalating a spat between the German government and the world’s richest person. Scholz, speaking to reporters in Berlin on Friday, was asked about a post Musk made on his X platform earlier the same day asserting that only the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party “can save Germany.” “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multi-billionaires,” Scholz said alongside Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain
FREEDOM NO MORE: Today, protests in Macau are just a memory after Beijing launched measures over the past few years that chilled free speech A decade ago, the elegant cobblestone streets of Macau’s Tap Seac Square were jam-packed with people clamouring for change and government accountability — the high-water mark for the former Portuguese colony’s political awakening. Now as Macau prepares to mark the 25th anniversary of its handover to China tomorrow, the territory’s democracy movement is all but over and the protests of 2014 no more than a memory. “Macau’s civil society is relatively docile and obedient, that’s the truth,” said Au Kam-san (歐錦新), 67, a schoolteacher who became one of Macau’s longest-serving pro-democracy legislators. “But if that were totally true, we wouldn’t
TRUDEAU IN TROUBLE: US president-elect Donald Trump reacted to Chrystia Freeland’s departure, saying: ‘Her behavior was totally toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Monday quit in a surprise move after disagreeing with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over US president-elect Donald Trump’s tariff threats. The resignation of Freeland, 56, who also stepped down as finance minister, marked the first open dissent against Trudeau from within his Cabinet, and could threaten his hold on power. Liberal leader Trudeau lags 20 points in polls behind his main rival, Conservative Pierre Poilievre, who has tried three times since September to topple the government and force a snap election. “It’s not been an easy day,” Trudeau said at a fundraiser Monday evening, but