Eight people are dead after a bus carrying dozens of farm workers in Florida crashed on Tuesday morning, according to state highway patrol.
Another eight people are in critical condition and 40 others are in hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Florida officials said the bus was carrying around 53 farm workers on their way to Cannon Farms, a watermelon farm in Dunnellon.
The site of the accident, State Road 40 West, has been temporarily closed.
The crash involved a bus and a 2001 Ford Ranger vehicle, which “collided in a sideswiped manner”, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles said in a statement.
The bus then drove through a fence and overturned, according to the statement.
Aerial footage showed the bus lying on its side, its front section nearly entirely removed and the metal frame crumpled.
A spokesman for the Marion County Sheriff’s office told reporters during a press briefing on Tuesday that there had been “30 plus ambulances on the scene” helping victims.
He said that traffic in the area was “a problem” and that accidents do occur there despite efforts to curb them.
Traffic was particularly difficult “this time a year”, he said, due to the increase in “migrant workers that are in our county on buses just like this”.
Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that some of the victims are Mexican nationals, though she did not give any further details.
Officials from the Mexican consulate in Orlando have been sent to assist them.
Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said the workers were “hard-working individuals” who were in the country legally. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them being here,” he said.
Cannon Farms said on Facebook that it was closed on Tuesday “out of respect to the losses and injuries” in the “tragic accident”.
A school bus was used to transport some people to hospital, local media reported. Marion County Fire Rescue confirmed in a statement that a school bus was not involved in the collision.
The accident happened in Dunnellon, roughly 45 miles (72km) south of Gainesville at around 06:35 EST (11:35 BST). The cause remains unknown. The Florida Highway Patrol was investigating.
by BBC News
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