At least 24 people, including two children, died Monday morning in a bus crash that plunged into a ravine in the Andean region of Huancavelica in southern Peru, authorities said.
An initial police report reported 20 dead and 35 injured, then a new press release from the Ministry of Health a little later in the morning said that “24 people have died, including two children.”
The accident occurred on the night of Sunday to Monday, at around 2:00 a.m. local time (07:00 GMT), when the bus with more than 50 passengers traveling from Huanta in Ayacucho to Huancayo in the Junin region left the road and fell more than 200 meters deeper into a ravine.
On August 13, another accident in the same region left 13 dead and 5 seriously injured.
Road accidents are common in Peru, particularly due to excessive speed and poor maintenance of roads, which usually wind through mountainous terrain.
The World Health Organization estimates that 4,414 people died on Peru’s roads in 2019.