JAKARTA, Indonesia – An Islamic high school student was on his way home from a pilgrimage to an Indonesian province on the island of Java.
The rain fell Wednesday night. The area had no street lights. While their bus was turning on a narrow, downhill section of the Wado-Malangbong highway in Sumedang, West Java province, it appears the brakes failed, police said.
The vehicle, which was carrying a total of 66 people, including the students of a school in Subang, their teachers and family members, plunged into the gorge and 29 people were killed, including the bus driver. Eleven others were seriously injured.
Police are still investigating the cause of the crash, a police spokesman, Dedi Juhana, said, but a lack of slip marks on the road indicated the brakes had failed.
He said the bus sank about 65 meters into a valley surrounded by agricultural land in Sumedang. The place where the accident took place was a government road regularly used by commuters between provinces.
Rescue crews worked overnight to evacuate the victims. On Thursday morning, they found the body of a boy trapped under the overturned bus. He died during the rescue effort. Some survivors were sent to a clinic and hospital in the area, and two died during treatment.
On television footage, family members were found in the wards of a hospital and a morgue in Sumedang.
Budi Setiyadi, the director general of land transport for the Indonesian Ministry of Transport, said in a statement on Wednesday: “We express our deepest concern and condolences on this incident.”
Mr. Budi said officials are considering adding rails to the road or paving it while investigating the crash.
Along Indonesian highways, steep valleys and gorges are common because they have so much mountainous terrain. Lack of adequate street lighting and poor infrastructure lead to frequent traffic accidents.
According to the Ministry of Transport, an average of three people in Indonesia died every hour in road accidents in the first quarter of 2020.
According to authorities, the student group traveled about six hours from their homes to pay tribute to the tomb of Syekh Abdul Muhyi, a missionary who brought Islam to the Tasikmalaya region in the mid-17th century, when Hinduism was still practicing. the primary religion was in the surrounding area.
The students, teachers and parents visited the site on the eve of a national holiday marking the ascension of the Prophet Mohammed.
Some Muslim families visit the graves of family members on Islamic holidays and use the opportunity for picnics outside. While some Islamic leaders oppose the use of pilgrimage to the cemeteries of missionaries, others allow it.