Twenty-seven people were killed and four seriously injured when a long-distance bus drove off a bridge in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality at 2:50 AM Tuesday morning, Xinhua News Agency reported.
Local traffic police said the bus, with 31 people on board, veered off an 80-meter-high bridge in the rural Qianjiang District.
Police said the bus was torn apart in the fall and 25 people were killed instantly, including the driver. Two others died later, one on his way to a nearby hospital and the other in the emergency room.
Zhou Mubing, vice mayor of Chongqing, arrived at Qianjiang to head a 400-member task force to deal with the accident's aftermath. Medical teams are still working to save the lives of the four survivors, according to a news release from the district's Work Safety Bureau.
According to Xinhua, the bus belonged to the Qianjiang branch of Chongqing Transportation Group and was en route from downtown Chongqing to the mountainous Qianjiang District.
"The scene of the accident was extremely tragic, with body parts scattered everywhere," said Yang Ke, of Chengdu's West China Metropolis newspaper, who was at the accident site on Tuesday.
