At least 41 police killed in Argentina bus crash

The vehicle flipped and fell off the bridge, landing about 65 feet below.

The bus, part of a convoy of three carrying border patrol officers, plunged around 65ft into a dry riverbed after the driver lost control on a bridge, police said.

Nine people were sent to the hospital, according to Ernesto Flores, civil defense undersecretary of Salta province.

The bus was taking at least 50 individuals, majority members of Argentina’s border authorities, when it came off the trail and fell about 15m (50ft) down a ravine. “This has been a very unfortunate tragedy so the Argentine people should be offering their condolences to these families”, Macri said.

Roads in Argentina, a large country with a land mass about four times the US state of Texas, are poorly maintained in many rural areas.

A local mayor had originally said 20 people were killed in the accident, but the death toll rose as emergency workers recovered bodies from inside the mangled wreckage of the bus.

“We need to improve our highways so these things don’t keep happening”, he told reporters on the sidelines of a news conference in Buenos Aires province.

The government announced that Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and National Gendarmerie director Omar Ariel Kannemann were traveling to the scene.