Two passenger buses collided Saturday on a highway in southern Bolivia, leaving at least 37 dead, including two children, and some 30 people injured, police said.
“So far we have 37 confirmed deaths,” Colonel Wilson Flores told AFP about the crash near the city of Uyuni in the department of Potosi.
The accident, the country’s most serious so far this year, occurred on a narrow two-way road early Saturday.
One of the buses was heading to the city of Oruro, the scene this weekend of the Oruro Carnival, one of the largest festivals in Latin America. It attracts tens of thousands of people.
It is still unclear what caused the accident, but police said that one of the buses had veered into the opposite lane.
“There has been a fatal accident, and it has left us” with “confirmed fatalities already,” Osmar Salvatierra, an official of the municipality of Uyuni, told local media.
Police were at the scene to clarify the circumstances of the crash and said they will provide an official report.
Officials also said one of the drivers, who survived the accident in grave condition, had “alcohol breath,” so a blood test was performed.
Bolivia’s winding mountain roads are notoriously deadly.
Road accidents kill an average of 1,400 people every year in the country of about 12 million inhabitants, according to government data.
Some information in this report is from Reuters.
