{Collision between passenger bus and cargo truck underlines West African nation’s relatively high rate of road deaths.}<\/p>\n
At least 71 people died after a passenger bus collided with a truck carrying tomatoes on a highway in Ghana, police say.<\/p>\n
They said the head-on collision between the government-operated bus heading to the northern town of Tamale from the second-largest city of Kumasi and the cargo truck happened on Wednesday evening.<\/p>\n
The town is about 420km from the West African nation’s capital, Accra.<\/p>\n
Described as one of the worst crashes in the country in years, the accident reduced the bus to a mass of metal and left the road covered with crushed red tomatoes.<\/p>\n
Bismark Owusu Fosu, medical director at Kintampo hospital, said on Thursday 71 people died in the crash, while a further 13 people were seriously injured.<\/p>\n
Many passengers were reported to have died on the spot, police said.<\/p>\n
“It was very serious. Many of them were already dead,” regional police spokesman Christopher Tawiah said, describing a scene where police and firemen were forced to saw the wreckage to pull out survivors.<\/p>\n
“We had to use chainsaws to cut through parts of the mangled bus to get bodies and survivors out.<\/p>\n
“The rest are still receiving treatment.”<\/p>\n
The cause of the accident is unknown, but police say both vehicles are suspected of speeding.<\/p>\n
Ghana has a relatively high rate of road deaths due in part to narrow and poorly constructed roads, failure by drivers to respect speed limits, and inadequate vehicle maintenance.<\/p>\n
John Mahama, Ghana’s president, said the accident was “very sad news” and sent “condolences to those who’ve lost loved ones” in a series of remarks posted on Twitter.<\/p>\n
Source: Al Jazeera:[More than 70 people die in Ghana bus crash->http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/02\/53-killed-ghana-bus-crash-160218135233234.html]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Collision between passenger bus and cargo truck underlines West African nation’s relatively high rate of road deaths.} At least 71 people died after a passenger bus collided with a truck carrying tomatoes on a highway in Ghana, police say. They said the head-on collision between the government-operated bus heading to the northern town of Tamale […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000072298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000072298,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23340.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23340.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23340.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23340.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23340.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23340.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000072298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23340"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23340"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}