Indonesia: Indonesian forensic scientists were yesterday struggling to identify the remains of 54 people, all but four of them teenage girls, who were burned to death when the bus they were in exploded after colliding with a lorry and a van.
Witnesses to Wednesday's crash said the lorry-driver appeared to lose control on a hill near the town of Situbondo, about 515 miles east of the capital Jakarta, and swerved into the path of the oncoming bus at about 7 p.m. Some police officers speculated, however, that the bus was overtaking the van and the lorry- driver panicked as he came around a corner and saw his lane blocked. After the two vehicles collided, the van hit the back of the bus and sparked the explosion.
The bus driver, Arwan, said yesterday that panic spread rapidly through the bus as it filled with flames and smoke. "I had the time to instruct the children to open the back door, but it turned out they could not," he said.
"Despite the pains that I got from being thrown in the collision, I broke some windows, but the fire spread too fast." The girls, aged 15 to 17, who were business students at a secondary school near the city of Yogyakarta, were returning from a five-day study trip in Bali. The other fatalities were a male student, two teachers and a tour guide.
Doctors at Situbondo hospital said only five of the bodies could be identified using identity cards. "Some will only be identified by DNA matching," said one doctor.
The van-driver survived with more than 60 per cent burns. Police yesterday said they had arrested the lorry-driver, who had fled the scene.
The provincial police chief, Mr Heru Subanto, declined to comment on the progress of the investigation. "We are still interrogating those involved and witnesses," he said.
The students had just finished dinner with their classmates, who boarded two other buses and left the beachside restaurant first. Most of the students' parents only learned whether their children had survived when they went to meet the buses yesterday.
The accident is the worst this year on Indonesia's dangerous roads, where truck- and bus-drivers appear to break the traffic rules more often than they obey them. - (Guardian service)