At least 13 people, including eleven nursery and primary school pupils, were killed Tuesday morning and 16 others were injured after their school bus veered off the road and plunged into a ditch in southern Tanzania's Mtwara region, said police.
Nicodemus Katembo, the Mtwara acting regional police commander, identified the other victims as the driver of the school bus and his assistant.
Katembo said the incident happened at Mikindani on the outskirts of the Mtwara municipality after a brakes failure at 7 am, the local time when the bus was ferrying the pupils to the school.
The 16 injured children were rushed to the Mtwara regional hospital for treatment, where the hospital's medical officer Hamad Nyembea described the conditions of five pupils as critical.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan sent a condolence message to the Mtwara regional commissioner Marco Gaguti on behalf of the bereaved families, saying she was shocked by the untimely deaths of the young children.
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