Venice: 20 tourists, driver dead as bus veers off bridge, catches fire

Firefighters and rescuers worked through the Tuesday night to extract the bodies from the flaming wreckage of the bus and to put down the fire, media reports said.

“The scene we found was terrible. It took about one hour to extract some of the bodies.” Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro wrote on X, adding the scene was “apocalyptic”.

The tragedy happened on the mainland just nine km northwest of Venice, said Renato Boraso, a city official. Two of the dead were children.

The cause of the accident was not clear. But Italian media said the electric bus fell a few metres before crashing close to Mestre's railway tracks where it caught fire.

The bus, driven by an experienced Italian driver, was carrying foreign tourists and was on its way to a camping site near the community of Marghera.

Grisly scenes

The dead included, among others, four Ukrainians and a German besides the driver. The seriously injured included French, Spanish and Croatian nationals.

“The people in the bus found themselves surrounded by flames,” Mauro Luongo, commander of the Venice firefighters’ team, was quoted as saying.

Italian Godstime Erheneden was in his apartment near the accident when he heard the crash outside. He rushed out and was among the first to enter the crashed bus.

“When we went in, we saw the driver right away. He was dead. I carried a woman out on my shoulders, then a man,” Erheneden told the Venice daily il Gazzettino.

In 2017, 16 people on a bus carrying Hungarian students died in an accident near the northern city of Verona. And in 2013, 40 people were killed in one of Italy's worst vehicle accidents when a bus plunged off a viaduct close to the southern city of Avellino.

(With inputs from agencies)