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Schoolgirls killed in Nepal bus crash

  • Story Highlights
  • Police: The dead schoolchildren were all girls between 9 and 15 years old
  • Reports: The bus driver had tried to avoid an oncoming tractor loaded with thatch
  • Sixty injured people were hospitalized
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KATHMANDU, Nepal (CNN) -- At least 22 people, most of them children, died in southern Nepal when their bus overturned on a bridge and fell nearly 100 feet (30 meters), police said.

About 60 injured were being treated in various hospitals in the area Thursday night.

"The bus was returning from a school picnic when the bus rolled over a few times and crushed (the) victims," senior police officer Gyan Bikram Shah told CNN by phone from Chitwan, about 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) south of Kathmandu.

The bus driver had tried to avoid an oncoming tractor loaded with thatch and lost control of the bus, which plunged, according to initial reports received by police.

The schoolchildren were all girls aged between 9 and 15 years old, he said, adding that two teachers also were killed.

A second bus carrying boys was not involved in the accident, Shah said.

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