{"id":312995,"date":"2017-04-22T11:27:28","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T11:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=312995"},"modified":"2017-04-22T11:27:28","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T11:27:28","slug":"south-africa-bus-crash-kills-at-least-19-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=312995","title":{"rendered":"South Africa bus crash ‘kills at least 19 children’"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least 19 children have been killed in a minibus crash near the South African capital, Pretoria, emergency services and officials say.<\/p>\n

The children died after the vehicle burst into flames following a collision with a truck just north of the capital.<\/p>\n

There were understood to be both primary and secondary school-aged children on board.<\/p>\n

Panyaza Lesufi, the official responsible for education in Gauteng province, said it was a “dark day”.<\/p>\n

The minibus collided with a truck on the single carriageway R25, between Verena in Mpumalanga and Bronkhorstspruit in Gauteng, having left from Mahlenga High.<\/p>\n

The emergency services rescued seven children before the bus burst into flames.<\/p>\n

“It is believed the driver of minibus underestimated the speed of the truck and collided with him whilst turning,” the Gauteng Education Department said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Police later said the bus driver was also killed in the accident, while the driver of the truck survived.<\/p>\n

Pictures show the minibus on its side, entirely burnt out.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

In a statement, emergency medical service ER24 described arriving at the scene, where firefighters were tackling the flames. A number of children had already been pulled out by “members of the community”, the statement said.<\/p>\n

“Once the flames had been extinguished, paramedics found that approximately 13 children [were] lying trapped inside the vehicle. Unfortunately, nothing could be done for the children and they were declared dead on the scene,” the statement added.<\/p>\n

The African National Congress (ANC) later said that it was “gravely saddened” by the deaths of the school pupils following the “heart-breaking accident” on Friday.<\/p>\n

“It is a sad day for South Africa,” the statement said, adding that the ANC “extends its deepest condolences to the bereaved families”.<\/p>\n

ER24 and the Gauteng Education Department had earlier reported that a total of 20 people had been killed, with the education department adding that two of the dead were adults.<\/p>\n

“This is a huge loss and we’re deeply pained by the tragic news,” the education department tweeted.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

South Africa has some of the deadliest roads in the world. According to the country’s Road Traffic Management Corporation, there were 13,673 deaths in the 12 months from October 2015 – which equates to more than 37 people dying every day.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At least 19 children have been killed in a minibus crash near the South African capital, Pretoria, emergency services and officials say. The children died after the vehicle burst into flames following a collision with a truck just north of the capital. There were understood to be both primary and secondary school-aged children on board. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":312996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[6426,6427,481,6428],"class_list":["post-312995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-bus-crash","tag-mini-bus-crash","tag-south-africa","tag-south-africa-road-accident"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=312995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=312995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=312995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=312995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}