ROME (Italy): As many as 21 people have been killed, including two children after a passenger bus carrying Italians and foreigners fell off a bridge in Mestre, Italy, near Venice on Tuesday, CNN reported.
The bus was travelling from Venice to nearby Marghera and was “full of people returning home from work,” Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro told state media RAI.
“It completely went off the road, it flew off the bridge. It was a bus; it was a highway. We are in mourning,” he added. Brugnaro described the scene as “apocalyptic” in a post on Facebook.
Chief of Staff of the Prefecture of Venice Francesco Martino told CNN that 18 people were also injured in the crash and that authorities were still trying to determine what caused it.
The accident occurred on the overpass of a road that leads from Mestre to Marghera and the A4 motorway, Italian media skytg24 reported, as per CNN.
The bus broke through a wall of the overpass, falling between a warehouse and the tracks of the Mestre station below, according to skytg24.
The fire brigade wrote on X: “Following the impact, the vehicle caught fire.”
Morris Ceron, general director of the municipality of Venice, told the Italian public broadcaster RAI that the vehicle was headed towards a campsite.
“The identification of the bodies is underway,” Ceron told RAI. (ANI)