Bus carrying youth falls into gorge in Indian Kashmir, killing 17

USPA News - A private bus carrying youth to a recruitment rally plunged into a deep gorge in India-administered Kashmir on early Tuesday morning, killing seventeen people and injuring more than 30 others, many of them critically so, local authorities said. The accident happened at around 2:30 a.m. local time on Tuesday when the private bus was carrying more than 50 people, most of them youth, to the region`s summer capital of Srinagar for a recruitment rally.

The accident occurred on the Jammu-Srinagar highway in Ramban district. A Jammu and Kashmir Police official said the bus had skidded off the road due to alleged "negligence" of the driver, causing it to fall into the gorge. A total of seventeen people were killed in Tuesday`s crash while all 34 survivors were injured, including seventeen who were described to be in a critical condition. Among those killed were six women and a child, the official said. India, the world`s second most populous nation with more than 1.2 billion citizens, is often the scene of deadly road accidents, many of which are attributed to reckless driving, aging vehicles and overloading. India overtook its neighbor China to top the world in road fatalities in 2010. According to India`s National Crime Records Bureau, more than 136,800 people were killed in road accidents across the country in 2011, an increase from 134,000 deaths in the previous year. Deaths as the result of road accidents account for up to 40 percent of the country`s deaths due to unnatural causes.