Bus crash kills at least 23 people in Peru’s Andes

More than a dozen injured after bus veered off cliff in south-central Andes region of Ayacucho, interior ministry says.

A bus crash in Peru’s Andes mountains has killed at least 23 people and injured more than a dozen others, the country’s interior ministry said, as emergency crews struggled to reach the site of the incident.

In a post on social media on Tuesday afternoon, the ministry said Peruvian police were carrying out a search-and-rescue operation after the crash in the Ayacucho region, located in the south-central Andes.

Thirteen injured people were evacuated from the crash site, the ministry added.

Jhonny Rolando Valderrama, head of a highway protection division, told RPP radio earlier in the day that the crash occurred on the Los Libertadores highway.

The bus, which was carrying more than 40 people, was headed for Ayacucho from the capital, Lima, when it veered off a cliff about 200m (656ft) high in the early morning hours, Valderrama said.

“The area is difficult to access for the emergency services,” Valderrama also told the AFP news agency, adding that an investigation was underway to determine the cause of the crash.

Photos shared by Peruvian news outlets and on social media showed a damaged bus lying on its side in a grassy area, with debris strewn on the ground.

Deadly bus crashes are common on Peru’s precarious mountain roads.

In September, two dozen people were killed when a bus plummeted down a slope after veering off a mountain road near Huancavelica, northwest of the Ayacucho region.

Last year, the South American country registered more than 3,130 deaths from more than 87,000 crashes.

The cause of the latest incident has not been established.

Seventy percent of crashes in Peru are due to human factors such as driver incompetence or fatigue, according to official data.