The remains of the crashed bus are seen in Verona, Italy, Jan. 21, 2017. Sixteen people, primarily teenagers, died and 26 were hurt when the bus leased by a Budapest secondary school crashed into a motorway pylon and burst into flame just before midnight on Friday. The Hungarian government has declared Jan. 23 as an official day of mourning. (Xinhua)
BUDAPEST, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) -- Sixteen people were killed after a bus carrying Hungarian students home from a ski camp in France crashed into a bridge pylon and caught fire in northern Italy just before midnight, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Saturday.
The teenagers all came from a secondary school in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, Szijjarto told reporters.
Italian authorities had reported 16 badly burned bodies and 26 injured, three of them in serious condition, he said, adding that 12 passengers were luckily uninjured.
The foreign minister said he feared that the death toll could rise as the number of people on the bus at the time of the accident was uncertain.
The bus was officially carrying 54 passengers and two drivers but apparently more than that number were on board, he said.
Authorities did not find any skid mark and were at a loss to explain the cause of the crash, he added.
Earlier, Italian authorities said that the bus was carrying 55 people in total, 39 of which were injured and the others killed.
They said the accident occurred at around 11:00 p.m. local time Friday (2200 GMT), when the bus was exiting a highway near the northern Italian city of Verona in the direction of Venice, and caught fire after the collision.
