DHAKA, May 3 (Xinhua) -- At least seven people were killed and 25 others injured when a night coach veered off the road and fell into a ditch in Bangladesh's central Tangail district late Tuesday night, a senior police official said Wednesday.
"The passenger bus fell into a road side ditch, leaving seven passengers dead on the spot and 25 others injured," Mohammad Mahbub Alam, the district's police chief, told journalists.
The accident occurred at about 10:00 p.m. (local time) on Tuesday as the bus driver lost control over the steering and plunged the vehicle into a ditch.
Bangladesh has one of the highest fatality rates for road accidents in the world mainly due to shoddy highways, poorly maintained vehicles, violation of traffic rules by inept drivers and lack of monitoring of the traffic department.
According to a study from the Accident Research Center of Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology, some 10,000 to 12,000 people are killed in road accidents in Bangladesh every year, of which about 75 percent fatalities occur in rural areas.
