20 Myanmar migrant workers killed in Thailand bus fire
Bangkok: Twenty migrant workers from Myanmar were killed when their bus caught fire in northwestern Thailand on Friday, the police said.
The workers were travelling to a factory district near Bangkok when their chartered bus was engulfed in flames around 1.30 a.m. in Tak Province, the Bangkok Post reported.
The double-decker bus was carrying 47 Myanmar workers, out of which 27 managed to escape the inferno, said Col. Krissana Pattanacharoen, a Royal Thai Police spokesman.
The cause of the fire was not yet known, he said. Initial reports said that the engine of the bus caught fire which spread quickly through the vehicle.
Police said the fire was so intense that identifying the dead would require experts. One officer at the scene told the daily that he could not distinguish between male and female corpses.
The authorities were planning to interview the driver, who survived the fire.
The workers who were killed on Friday had passed the lengthy new registration process to work in the country, reports said.
Thailand has the world's highest rate of road traffic deaths, according to World Health Organisation data from 2013. In 2015, it was found to have the second highest road fatality rate behind Libya.
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3 killed, 15 injured as auto-rickshaw hits multiple vehicles in Thane
Thane (PTI): Three persons were killed and 15 others injured when an auto-rickshaw hit a bus and some other vehicles on a highway in Maharashtra's Thane district on Wednesday morning, police said.
The accident took place at 4.15 am on Mumbai-Agra highway near Khinavli bridge at Ghoteghar village in Shahapur taluka, they said.
The auto-rickshaw driver lost control over the wheels. As a result, the vehicle hit the road-divider, jumped the lane and collided with a private luxury bus, two cars and a tempo coming from the opposite direction, an official from Shahapur police station told PTI.
Three occupants of the bus died on the spot and 15 other persons, including the auto-rickshaw driver, were injured, he said.
The bus was on way from Nashik to Mumbai, the official said.
After being alerted, local police along with the emergency response teams rushed to the spot.
The injured persons were admitted to Shahapur sub-hospital and three of them were reported to be in a serious condition, the official said.
The bodies were sent to a government hospital for post-mortem, the police added.
