Nigeria bus carnage mounts

Africa's most populated country heavily depends on buses

A bus has plunged into a river in northern Nigeria, killing 49 people and injuring 23, eyewitnesses told the French news agency AFP.

Nigerian drivers are notorious for their aggressive style of driving

The agency said the accident occurred at Dakatsalle Bridge, around 50 km south of the northern city of Kano, at around 1400 local time (1300GMT) on Sunday.

The bus was an overnight service from the capital, Lagos.

It was the latest, and deadliest, bus crash in Nigeria in the space of a few days.

One survivor among the 72 passengers, Garba Mohammed, told AFP that the bus had been speeding when it blew a tyre as it started across the bridge.

Twenty-three people were rescued, 10 bodies recovered and the remaining 39 are still trapped inside the submerged bus, staff at the Murtala Mohammed hospital in Kano said.

Mr Mohammed said that local fishermen had helped pull out many of the survivors as well as 10 of the bodies.

Catalogue of road disasters

Nigeria has earned a grim reputation for its road accidents.

Only on Saturday, 12 people were killed when a mini-bus hit a trailer and plunged into a canal in Lagos.

And last Wednesday two buses collided head-on near the central town of Lokoja, killing 13 and injuring about 30.

One of the worst incidents occurred in December last year when a lorry collided with a bus and car on a bad stretch of road in the southeast, between Enugu and Port Harcourt.

The death toll was 62 with no survivors.

As well as poor roads, bad driving and poor vehicle maintenance are often given as reasons for Nigeria's high rate of traffic accidents.