Mexican bus crashes down ravine, 57 dead

MEXICO CITY - An overloaded tour bus veered off a mountain road, crashed through the metal barrier and tumbled hundreds of feet down a ravine in eastern Mexico today, killing at least 57 people.

Local officials said there were three survivors of the crash, one of the worst in Mexico in recent years. After a full day of searching the scrub around the twisted wreckage the death count was lowered to 57 from 63 earlier.

"Earlier we talked about 63 dead but we did a recount and this (57) is the official figure we have now," civil protection official Ranulfo Marquez told local radio.

Easter is one of the most important annual holidays in Catholic Mexico, and highways were badly clogged as millions returned home from religious festivities.

The accident, on a steep stretch of highway linking the capital with the Gulf of Mexico port city of Veracruz, was one of the worst traffic crashes in Mexico in recent years.

Television pictures showed ambulance workers carrying bloodied bodies away from the bus, which was reduced to small pieces of twisted wreckage. Half a dozen corpses were lined up on the floor of a makeshift morgue.

"It broke the barrier and went down a ravine," civil protection official Ranulfo Marquez said.

The dead, including 10 children, were all Mexicans on a chartered bus, which rescue services said was overloaded with passengers. The crash could have been caused by either brake failure or driver negligence, police said.

The crash happened near the Pico de Orizaba, a dormant volcano and Mexico's tallest mountain at over 5600m.

- REUTERS