21 killed, 18 injured after passenger bus falls off bridge in Italy’s Venice

At least 21 people have been killed including children after a passenger bus carrying Italians and foreigners fell off a bridge in Italy’s Mestre near Venice on Tuesday evening, said media reports.

21 dead after passenger bus falls off bridge in Italy’s Venice

Briefing about the incident, Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro told state media RAI that the bus was travelling from Venice to a nearby Marghera and was full of people returning home from work.

#WATCH | At least 21 people died after a city bus carrying tourists to a campground crashed off an overpass near Venice in northern Italy and caught fire, the city's prefect Michele Di Bari said: Reuters pic.twitter.com/rMNjksucn0

— ANI (@ANI) October 3, 2023

“It completely went off the road, it flew off the bridge. It was a bus; it was a highway. We are in mourning,” he added.

Taking it to Facebook, Brugnaro described the scene as ‘apocalyptic.’

18 injured in this accident

Apart from the deceased passengers, nearly 18 people were also injured in the accident, said Chief of Staff of the Prefecture of Venice Francesco Martino. Meanwhile, the authorities were still trying to determine the cause of this tragedy.

This incident took place on the overpass of a road that leads from Mestre to Marghera and the A4 motorway at around 07:30 pm (1730 GMT), said reports.

The bus broke through a wall of the overpass, falling between a warehouse and the tracks of the Mestre station below, it added.

In a tweet on X, the fire brigade wrote, “Following the impact, the vehicle caught fire.”

Morris Ceron, general director of the municipality of Venice, told the Italian public broadcaster RAI that the vehicle was headed towards a campsite.

“The identification of the bodies is underway,” Ceron told RAI.