Nineteen children and one adult were killed on Thursday when a bridge crumbled on the western Indian coast, plunging a school bus and four other vehicles into a river, police said.
The two ends of the 325m bridge collapsed inward under the weight of a school bus, a mini-bus and three motorcycles in Daman, a popular Arabian Sea resort 193km north of Mumbai.
”Twenty people have died in the tragedy, 19 of them children,” Daman Inspector General of Police RP Upadyay said.
The bridge fell apart as heavy rain poured down in the former Portuguese colony. Upadhyay said the bridge was built in 1983, relatively new by Indian standards.
”It just suddenly caved in. We’re looking to see why it happened,” he said.
An officer in the police control room had earlier said the one adult was a 20-year-old man.
”The tide has now receded so we’re sending divers into the river,” Upadhyay said.
Daman municipal official Vishal Tandal said 28 people, 24 of them students, were rescued after the bridge collapsed at 1.25 pm (7.55am GMT) over the Daman Ganga river.
Up to 900 people were assisting rescue operations. Fishermen who raced to the site in their trawlers pulled the school bus out of the water, Tandal said.
The Indian coast guard and navy were also called in to help, Upadyay said.
A doctor at Daman’s Marwar hospital said 15 patients had been admitted after the bridge collapsed and that wounded people continued to pour in hours after the collapse.
”We fear that some people could have been swept by the current into the sea,” the doctor said.
Daman and Diu, across the Gulf of Cambay, were ruled by Portugal from the 16th century until 1961. They remain administered directly by New Delhi, unlike Gujarat state, which surrounds them.
The former colonies are popular resorts for their beaches on the Arabian Sea and the availability of alcohol, which is illegal in Gujarat. — Sapa-AFP