At least 15 feared dead in bus crash in Mexico

At least 15 people are feared to have been killed and 21 others were injured in a bus crash in the coastal Mexican state of Nayarit, state authorities said.

The crash happened in the early hours of Thursday near Barranca Blanca on the highway outside state capital Tepic, officials said.

The Elite passenger bus had departed from Mexico City and was heading towards Tijuana, local media reported.

“At the scene there were 21 injured people of various ages who were attended to, as well as 15 people who are presumed to be without signs of life,” Nayarit Civil Protection and Firefighters said in a post on social media on Thursday. “Work is being done to remove them from the site.”

Images shared online by Nayarit officials showed ambulances lining the highway.

The incident is one of the latest cases of deadly crashes that have killed dozens of people, underscoring the hazards of steep and windy roads where fatalities are frequent.

Last month, 27 people were killed after a bus crashed off of a road and into a ravine in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca.

In April, 18 people died when a bus drove off a cliff in western Mexico. In December 2021, a truck carrying about 166 people crashed in the state of Chiapas, killing 54 people and injuring dozens of others.

Those killed in the December 2021 incident were largely migrants packed tightly into the truck, underscoring the perilous conditions often faced when trying to clandestinely travel through Latin American countries such as Mexico.