OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
3:45 PM – Tuesday, October 3, 2023
Over 20 people have died after a city bus transporting tourists and locals to a campground fell off of a bridge and caught fire near Venice in northern Italy.
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On Tuesday, an Italian bus ran off the road and fell close to railway lines near the district of Mestre, which is attached to Venice by a bridge.
According to a Sky Italia television report, 18 bodies had been dragged from the accident after the bus fell 49 feet onto electricity lines and proceeded to catch on fire at approximately 7:45 p.m.
Rescue workers have been assisting with the victims near the scene.
Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro stated that a “huge tragedy” had taken place.
The bus was traveling from Venice to nearby Marghera. It was “full of people returning home from work,” the mayor of Venice told the Italian television broadcaster Rai News24.
Tourists were also believed to have been aboard the vehicle, which was headed towards a campsite, according to Brugnaro.
“It completely went off the road, it flew off the bridge. It was a bus; it was a highway. We are in mourning,” the Venetian mayor announced. “There are at least 20 dead, but some people are still trapped in the wreckage,”
As of today, the cause of the crash remains unclear.
“It’s an apocalyptic scene. I am speechless,” Brugnaro posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Venice’s prefecture, a branch of the interior ministry, was recited by Italy’s ANSA news agency, declaring that 21 people have died in the accident. 12 had been injured and at least five people were still unaccounted for.
A Venice city hall spokesperson announced that two of the victims were children.
However, as the rescue functions are still ongoing, other news agencies mentioned that the death toll has the potential to climb higher.
Luca Zaia, the president of Italy’s Veneto region, said that the bus crash in northern Italy was “a tragedy of enormous proportions.”
Zaia claimed that the wreckage involved some minors and that the victims and injured are “of various nationalities, not just Italians.”
More than 20 ambulances “were used and the Treviso air ambulance was also called to the scene,” he said, adding that the injured were taken to hospitals in “Mestre, Mirano, Padua and Treviso.”
The Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, expressed her compassion for the victims and those impacted on X.
“I express my deepest condolences, my personal and the whole government, for the serious incident that took place in Mestre,” she wrote. “Our thoughts go out to the victims and their families and friends.”
Italy has experienced several tragic bus crashes in recent years.
16 people died on board a bus holding Hungarian students in an accident near the northern city of Verona in 2017. Additionally, in 2013, 40 people died when a bus fell off of a viaduct in southern Italy in one of the country’s most tragic road accidents.
This is a developing story.
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