DHAKA: Two passenger buses collided head-on yesterday in central Bangladesh, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens more, a television station said. The two buses crashed in Comilla district, on a busy two-lane highway linking the capital, Dhaka, to the southern port city of Chittagong, the private Bangla Vision network reported.
One bus fell into a rain-filled roadside ditch and landed on its side. Some of the passengers managed to get out of the partially submerged vehicle, but many others were trapped inside.
Rescuers later recovered at least 19 bodies from the wreckage of the bus in the ditch, which is about 6 feet (1.8 meters) deep. About 30 wounded passengers from both vehicles were taken to a nearby hospital in Comilla district, 85 kilometers east of Dhaka, where one person died of her injuries.
Meanwhile, a 3-month-old baby girl survived unhurt after a landslide destroyed her family’s home Sunday in southern Bangladesh, killing her parents and two older siblings, an official said. Rescuers pulled the infant from the rubble of the family’s mud and straw hut at the foot of a hill in Teknaf district, about 380 kilometers south of Dhaka, said Shubal Das, an official in nearby Cox’s Bazar.
At least 13 people, including members of a bridal party, were killed in highway accidents across Bangladesh at the weekend, media reports said Sunday. Seven of a 20-member wedding group traveling in a micro-bus died as the vehicle slewed from a rain-soaked road and plunged into a ditch in north eastern Sylhet province, the Bangladesh Observer said. The accident happened early Saturday close to the farming town of Sarail 270 kilometers north of, the newspaper reported.
