At least 45 people were killed when a passenger bus plunged into the Nithi River in eastern Kenya's Meru district on Thursday night, reports said yesterday
Up to 27 other passengers were rushed to Chogoria Mission Hospital, 30 km away, as the public joined police in a frantic search and rescue operation for the remaining passengers.
It was feared many more victims could have been trapped in the wreckage of the Tawfiq bus, which had an official capacity of 65, but was carrying more than 80 passengers at the time of the accident, the reports said.
The ill-fated bus was travelling from Maua in Meru to the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa on the Thuchi-Nkubu road when it plunged off a bridge into the river. The latest disaster brings to at least 158 the number of people who have perished at the bridge in the past five years, the Daily Nation newspaper said.
Meanwhile, two Kenya railway employees have been charged with negligence in connection with last weekend's train accident outside Nairobi which left at least 29 people dead, The Kenya Times said yesterday. The newspaper said that the station master, Mr Joseph Muriuki Kathemwa, and a guard, Mr Hezekiah Mukithwana Omuranda, of Kenya Railways Corporation appeared before a Nairobi court on Thursday to answer charges that they failed to take necessary precautions against probable danger at the site.
Several wagons carrying flammable material uncoupled from a train engine and exploded on Saturday night at Athi River, some 30 km from Nairobi, sending a fireball through nearby houses burning to death the victims.
The charges said the men "failed to take precautions against any probable danger from detached nine wagons containing Total and Shell petroleum gases that were in their possession".