At least 21 killed after bus plunges off Venice bridge in Italy

At least 21 people, including two children and foreign tourists, were killed Tuesday and several others wounded when a bus running on methane plunged off a bridge in Venice and caught fire.

“A tragedy has struck our community this evening,” mayor Luigi Brugnaro wrote on Facebook, describing the site of the crash as “an apocalyptic scene”.

“The provisional toll is at least 21 fatalities and over 20 people hospitalised,” said Luca Zaia, the governor of the Venice region, deploring a “tragedy of enormous proportions”.”Efforts are on to extract and identify the bodies,” he said. “The victims and the wounded include people of several nationalities, not just Italians.”A city hall official said the dead included Ukrainian tourists while Italian news agency ANSA said the fatalities included German and French citizens.Three Ukrainians, a Croatian, German and French national were among the injured, a city official told AFP.The bus was returning from Venice’s historic centre to a camping site when the accident occurred around 7:30 pm (1730 GMT).