Football team in Togo involved in fatal bus crash/ BBC News

Nothing much was left of the bus after the crash outside Atakpame/ Images credit: Daily Mail

Six people died when a bus carrying a Togolese football team plunged into a ravine and caught fire.

The accident happened 100 miles (160km) north of the capital, Lome, as the Etoile Filante [Shooting Star] team was travelling to a match.
In addition to the six technical staff who were killed, 25 people were admitted to hospital with serious injuries or severe burns.

Tragedy: The remains of the bus were smouldering on Sunday morning /Images credit: Daily Mail

Among those killed was former Togo national goalkeeper Charles Balogoun.

Reports said that a tyre burst before the bus toppled over and fell down the ravine. The accident happened on Saturday near the city of Atakpame.
"We do not know how we managed to get out of the bus," said one of the survivors, goalkeeper Mama Souleyman, according to Associated Press.

"Most of the players got out because they were all in the front row of the bus."

Images broadcast on Togolese national television showed the smouldering wreckage of the bus, almost completely burnt.
Those injured were reportedly ordered to be taken to a military hospital in the capital, Lome, by President Faure Gnassingbe.
Last year, two members of the Togo national football squad, and an Angolan bus driver, were killed after the team bus was attacked by separatist rebels in Angola.
In 2007, Togo Sports Minister Richard Attipoe was among 22 people who died when a helicopter carrying Togolese soccer fans and officials crashed in Sierra Leone after an African Cup qualifying match.

_____________________________________________________________

RELATED NEWS

• More Tragedy strikes Togo as six die in bus crash / Sydney Morning Herald
• At least 6 Togolese soccer players dead, 28 critically injured.../ Washington Post
• Six dead in football team bus crash / MSN UK

»»  read more

School bus crash with coal truck kills 20 in China

credit: Getty Images

Eighteen children and two adults died after an overloaded school bus collided with a coal truck Wednesday in northwest China's Gansu province, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The nine-seater minibus was involved in a head-on collision with the truck in Yulinzi township in Zhengning county, in the Qingyang city area, an official from the city's work safety bureau told Xinhua.
The bureau blamed overloading, saying in a statement the bus had 64 people on board at the time. Most of them were children from Yulinzi's Little Doctor Kindergarten, Xinhua said.
Five people, including the bus driver, were reported to have died at the scene Wednesday morning, with the others confirmed dead later.
Another 45 people, most of them children, were injured and are being treated in hospital, Xinhua quotes the bureau as saying.

»»  read more