24 burned to death in Mexico bus-truck crash

MEXICO CITY — A fiery highway crash killed 24 people on Thursday when a fuel truck crashed into a passenger bus and exploded on a highway on the Mexican Pacific coast, authorities said.

Michoacan State Firemen’s Association commander Jorge Ostria told local media that that the driver of a truck carrying about 10,560 gallons of petroleum lurched into oncoming traffic around 6:30 a.m. and crashed into the bus.

The resulting explosion and fire burned the victims alive, he said. The driver of the truck was among the dead. Several passengers managed to escape the fire and eight people, including two small children, were hospitalized with injuries, according to La Jornada newspaper.

A photo posted on Twitter by the Mexican Federal Police showed the smoking, charred hulks of two large vehicles at the side of a two-lane highway beneath a canopy of palms.

A survivor of the crash told news website Aristegui Noticias that the bus had been hired by a family to bring them from the central Mexican city of Morelia to the coastal town of Lazaro Cardenas for the Easter holidays.

Ostria said 36 people were aboard the bus. Initially 29 people were believed to have died in the crash, but the death toll was later revised downward.

The crash was on the border between Michoacan and Guerrero state. Authorities in Guerrero said the charred remains made it difficult to determine how many corpses were there.