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Road crash kills 33 workers in eastern India

Other News Materials 3 August 2008 07:54 (UTC +04:00)

At least 33 farm workers were killed and 17 hurt when an overloaded truck carrying them plunged into a small river in India's eastern state of Bihar, police said Sunday.

The accident occurred as the vehicle carrying 50 workers veered off a curve in the state's Lakhisarai district some 150 kilometers south-east of the state capital Patna on Saturday night.

A police spokesman said the workers were returning home to the nearby Khagaria district with sacks of food grain they earned as wages, the dpa reported.

"The driver lost control of the truck as hit a pot-holed stretch of road near the curve, causing the vehicle to fall into the Gorhi river," Lakhisarai Superintendent of Police SP Shukla said by telephone.

"We have recovered 33 bodies after completing overnight rescue and relief operations," he said.

Most of the accident victims died after being crushed beneath the truck and sacks of grain as the vehicle overturned. There was little water in the river, he said.

The injured were moved to a government-run hospital in the nearby Jamui district. The death toll could rise as ten of the injured were in critical condition, Shukla said.

This is the second major road crash in India in the past few days. On July 31, thirty-three Nepalese pilgrims were killed in a similar accident in the northern mountainous state of Uttarakhand.

Many workers and farmers use trucks to travel to their places of work in India and there are regular accidents involving such transport in the country.

In all, more than 95,000 people are killed in road crashes every year in India, many of them in bus crashes in mountainous states. The death toll is among the highest in the world.

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