Tourists die in bus crash horror

A bus carrying tourists – including passengers of a US flight from Phoenix - crashed in western Mexico this morning, killing at least 17 and injuring 14, authorities said.

The Vallarta Plus bus was carrying 35 passengers from the resort city of Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara before dawn when it ran off a mountain road and plunged down a 820-foot ravine, Nayarit’s state prosecutor’s office said in a press release.

At least 17 people were killed, including 13 men, three women and a 1-year-old child. Another 14 were injured, five badly, it said.

The driver of the bus, 28-year-old Magdiel Coronado, was also injured and hospitalised, authorities said.

Vallarta Plus spokesman Daniel Rios said as many as half of the passengers were from a flight that had left Phoenix on Friday for Guadalajara.

The plane had been rerouted to Puerto Vallarta along with 17 other flights because of a fire at the Guadalajara airport.

The passengers had not been identified, but Rios said at least one family of eight were Mexicans legally living in Phoenix who were in the country for Independence Day celebrations.

Four of them were injured and one, a one-year-old child, was killed.

Authorities said four of the injured lived in Los Angeles and in Riverside, California but had no information on the deceased.