39 Killed After Bus Falls off Viaduct in Italy

Was carrying around 50 people

(Reuters)—Thirty-nine people were killed and around 10 injured when a bus plunged off a viaduct in southern Italy in what Prime Minister Enrico Letta described on Monday as a huge tragedy.

Initial reports suggested that the coach was travelling at speed and had hit four or five cars before crashing over the roadside barriers on a stretch of road near Monteforte Irpino, east of Naples, on Sunday night. There were around 50 people on board, including many children.

It was one of the worst road accidents in Italy's history, and the second transport disaster to hit southern Europe in the space of five days. Seventy-nine people were killed when a high-speed train derailed in the Spanish pilgrimage town of Santiago de Compostela on Wednesday.