Nigeria bus crashes

Sixty people have died after a bus plunged into a river in southern Nigeria.

Police said that an overnight coach travelling to Lagos crashed into an oncoming truck at about 0100 on Thursday, just west of Benin City.

She left for Lagos and now I will never see her again

Fiance of a bus crash victim

The bus then slid off the road into the Ovia River.

"There were five survivors. About 60 people died," a police spokesman said.

According to The Guardian newspaper, among the dead was a young woman preparing for her wedding next month

Her fiance was quoted as saying: "We were planning to get married in December. She left for Lagos and now I will never see her again."

On the same day, at least 13 people died in Lagos, when a minibus fell into a lagoon after colliding with a bigger bus on a bridge.

And in Assaba, also in southern Nigeria, 20 people are believed to have been killed when two buses collided.

Just a fortnight ago, more than 100 died in south-west Nigeria when a petrol tanker crashed into a queue of stationary cars and burst into flames.

The high death toll on Nigerian roads is usually blamed on the poor maintenance of vehicles, the bad state of the roads, overloading of vehicles and dangerous driving.