21 pilgrims dead, 30 injured in Mexico bus-truck collision

At least 21 people have died and 30 injured in a collision between a bus and truck in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracrus yesterday.

The bus was carrying passengers back from a religious pilgrimage to a Catholic shrine when it collided with a truck and caught fire.

The pilgrims were returning home from Mexico City's Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The crash took place on the Veracruz -Puebla highway, killing 19 people (two passengers in the truck, 17 in the bus), and two others who later died in hospital.

Local Media Times reports that the bus was carrying members of a Roman Catholic archdiocese located in Tuxtla Gutiérrez in Chiapas.

A spokesman for the Veracruz Secretariat for Civil Protection said the cause of the crash was that allegedly the tractor-trailer’s brakes failed, causing the truck to plow into the bus.but state officials were still investigating the cause of the crash.