Ramallah: At least 14 Palestinian children were burnt alive and some 60 injured when the school bus in which they were travelling burst into flames after colliding with a truck loaded with petrol at the Jaba'a junction, near here, yesterday.
Ambulances from Ramallah hospitals and Red Crescent brought the bodies and some injured children, mostly aged between four and five years, to the Palestine Medical Complex here.
Medical sources at the complex said that most victims were from the occupied East Jerusalem's Anata area.
Nasser Jubran, a representative of the families of the dead and injured children and a member of the Al Salam Committee of Anata, told Gulf News that three more victims have been declared clinically dead.
"The bad news is that bodies will be handed over only on Sunday after DNA tests," he said, stressing that none of the victims has so far been identified as they are badly burnt.
The ill-fated school bus and another one with 120 children from Noor Al Huda Kindergarten in Kafr Aqab were on their way to a field trip to the Ramallah play zone.
The victims' families went hysterical after they saw the bodies at the complex and complained that the buses were overloaded, the sources added.
Investigations
Preliminary investigations revealed that the truck, loaded with petrol, had an Israel licensed number plate driven by a Palestinian from the 1948 areas.
Doron Yisraeli, head of the Israeli police traffic unit in the area, said it had been raining and the truck had braked and skidded into the bus on the road just north of occupied Jerusalem.
"Human error, combined with the difficult conditions, led to lethal consequences," Yisraeli said.
Israeli and Palestinian emergency crews cooperated in rescue efforts at the scene, where the burned wreckage of the bus rested on its side against a stone wall on the shoulder of the road.
Dr Ahmad Bitawi, director of Ramallah Hospital in the West Bank, told Reuters that five children and a teacher were pronounced dead at the facility, which also treated 54 people injured in the accident.
Yisraeli said Israeli and Palestinian police were cooperating in the investigation.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared three days of mourning in the Palestinian territories. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on a visit to Cyprus, issued a statement expressing sorrow at the deaths.
— With additional inputs from Reuters
