Quito – Forty-seven people, among them at least 20 children, were killed and five others injured when a rented school bus hit a rock on a highway east of the Ecuadorian capital of Quito and rolled over, a Red Cross official said.
The five people injured in the accident on Sunday, one of the worst on record in this Andean nation, were all children, including one little girl who suffered severe head trauma, Red Cross spokesman Geovanny Yepez said.
“All the parents of the children died” in the accident, Yepez said.
The accident victims, most of them from one family, lived in the town of Sangolqui. Several friends and neighbors of the family were also among the 52 people aboard the bus.
Yepez said the bus had been rented by an Ecuadorian living in Spain who wanted to celebrate his return home with relatives and friends by taking them on an outing to Papallacta, a resort east of Quito that has thermal springs and is popular with residents of the capital and surrounding areas.
Many Ecuadorians from Sangolqui, near Quito in the Chillos Valley, have moved to Spain in search of a better life.
The road to Papallacta is dangerous because it winds through rugged terrain and there is a constant mist in the air.
Police have not yet determined the cause of the accident, but Red Cross officials said the bus, which was completely destroyed, may have experienced mechanical problems.
Witnesses said, however, that the bus driver was speeding on the curving road. The driver and his assistant were both killed in the crash.
Other witnesses who took part in rescue efforts told Ecuadorian media that they smelled a strong alcohol odor and saw liquor bottles in the wreckage.
