Two busloads of religious pilgrims and a diesel truck crashed in a fiery highway accident in south-eastern Brazil yesterday, killing at least 53 people and leaving 39 others injured, authorities said.
Police said a car and another truck were also involved in the accident, which occurred at 3 a.m. (7 a.m. Irish time) on a rain-slicked stretch of the Anhanguera highway about 110 miles north of Sao Paulo.
Witnesses said police believed the driver of the truck, which was carrying diesel fuel to Sao Paulo, fell asleep and ran off the highway. The truck exploded and billowing clouds of smoke forced the other vehicles off the road, witnesses said.
Television footage showed the two still-smoking tour buses burned down to their metal frames, with charred bodies being laid out alongside.
"There were 50 fatalities in the accident. There could be more now at the hospitals, where there are at least 30 more injured," a spokesman for Sao Paulo's state highway police said. "Most of the victims were from the two buses."
A police officer from the town of Araras near the site of the accident put the number of dead at 53.
Rescue workers at the scene said most of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition. Survivors were taken to hospitals in Araras and nearby Leme for treatment.
The buses were carrying 98 Catholic worshippers who were returning to Anapolis in the central Goias state from the Basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida, a shrine to Brazil's patron saint in the interior of Sao Paulo state.
The disaster was the second in three days involving religious worshippers in Brazil. On Saturday, 24 people were killed and nearly 500 injured when a roof caved in on an evangelical church on the outskirts of Sao Paulo.
Brazil announced emergency spending cuts yesterday in its latest attempt to shield Latin America's biggest economy from the worldwide financial crisis that has sent its markets plunging.
With general elections just four weeks away, the government also said it would ask Congress to approve a plan to reduce over the next three years a gaping fiscal deficit.
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso - the firm favourite to win the October 4th elections - spent the last few days denying a fiscal package was imminent.
But the finance ministry announced yesterday that 4 billion reais (£2.35 billion) would be cut from social and infrastructure spending in 1998.