BUENOS AIRES, Sept 16: At least 50 people were killed, including 10 children, and some 25 injured when a bus plunged into a ravine in northern Argentina on the way home from local pilgrimage, police said Monday.

“There are 50 confirmed dead, including several children, but that continues to be a preliminary death toll,” police commissioner Luis Cordoba said.

He added that more than 70 people had been traveling on the bus when it careened off a cliff in the mountainous Cuesta del Totoral region in northern Argentina on Sunday night.

Earlier reports in the media had put the death toll at 34, with 15 injured.

Many of the passengers were traveling to Tucuman province after a pilgrimage to Catamarca when the bus crashed, some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northeast of Buenos Aires.

Cordoba speculated that the bus had suffered some kind of mechanical failure, affecting the vehicle’s brakes.

Police and firefighters were working in difficult conditions to find survivors and victims. Cordoba said vegetation was hindering the work of rescuers along the winding mountain road.

Many of the injured, including three children who were traveling in their parents’ laps, were in serious condition and one of them was in a coma, said police spokesman Luis Diaz.

“Several children were sitting on their parents’ laps,” said a rescue worker.

The bus had a capacity of 52 but police and rescuers said that more than 70 were on board, many of them standing in the aisle. Police said it was the worst bus accident in the area, which borders on Chile.—AFP