A bus overturned in a mountainous area of the northern Philippines today, killing 27 people and injuring 17, police said.
The bus was descending a steep road about 10 km outside the city of Baguio when it slammed into a boulder and flipped over, Noe Wong, chief superintendent of the Cordillera region, told reporters.
"I am considering the accident as the bloodiest car accident this year," Tuba police chief Johnny Gaspar said, adding the latest was the seventh in the area since January.
After several accidents in recent years along the same highway, named after late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, local Ibaloi tribesmen butchered native pigs and performed a dance last year to ward off bad spirits.
Drivers consider parts of the Marcos highway treacherous due to a lack of barriers on the side of the road leading to a ravine.
In the latest accident, police said 24 of the 44 people in the bus died on the spot and three others at a nearby hospital. Among those killed were a one-year-old girl, the driver and the bus conductor.