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Friday, May 19 10:59 PM
SGT
Thai Bus Mountain Plunge Kills Five
MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) - A bus carrying Myanmar immigrants from a detention center in Bangkok tumbled 150 feet down a mountainside in northern Thailand on Friday, killing at least five people and injuring 65, hospital officials and police said. The bus was heading for the Thai border town of Mae Sot, a main crossing point into Myanmar about 230 miles northwest of the capital, when it plunged off a winding road in heavy rain around daybreak. ``The whole night we drove steadily, but from 5 a.m., the driver started going very fast,'' said one passenger, Kyaw Oo, 22, from Tavoy in southern Myanmar, who sustained minor injuries to his legs. ``By the time the accident happened he had just lost control. He hit a tree on the right hand side, and the bus fell down the left side of the mountain,'' Kyaw Oo said. ``People were screaming as he was losing control. The bus went down head first so those at back were less badly hurt. I saw a pregnant woman fall from the bus as it went down the mountain,'' he said. ``She died.'' It took a half hour before a police car drove past and could call for help. The injured included ethnic Mons, Karens and Burmans. All had been arrested in Samut Prakan on the outskirts of the Thai capital where they had been working illegally, officials said. They were to be repatriated to Myanmar, also known as Burma. Four of the injured were seriously hurt. All were brought to Mae Sot hospital, about 25 miles from the crash site. There were 65 Myanmar citizens and five Thais aboard the bus, which had been hired by Thai immigration authorities. One official was among the injured. The Thai driver was in a coma. Since last year, Thailand has been repatriating thousands of the nearly 1 million illegal migrants, most of them from Myanmar, who come to work on farms and factories in Thailand from poorer countries. |