15 dead as bus veers off road in Sri Lanka, plunges into precipice

A passenger bus veered off a road and plunged into a precipice in a mountainous region in Sri Lanka, killing 15 people and injuring 16 others, a police spokesman said Friday.

The accident occurred near the town of Wellawaya, about 280 kilometers east of the capital Colombo, on Thursday night and the bus fell into a roughly 1,000-foot precipice, police spokesman Fredrick Wootler said.

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The accident killed 15 people and wounded 16, including five children.

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Wootler said an initial police investigation revealed that the driver was driving the bus at high speed and lost control of it, crashing with another vehicle and into guardrails before toppling off the cliff.

The island’s winding roads are considered among the most dangerous in the world. Sri Lanka, a nation of 22 million people, records an average of 3,000 road fatalities each year.

[With AFP inputs]