Colombians and Venezuelans are among the majority of victims of the accident of a foreign registration bus that occurred on Tuesday outside Quito, which left at least 24 dead and 18 injured, authorities said. "The majority of victims are Colombians," said Secretary of Security of the mayor's office of Quito, Juan Zapata. Christian Rivera, director of the Emergency Operations Committee of Quito, told Gama television that the work has focused "on the identification of Colombian and Venezuelan citizens, who have mostly died."
"We regret the terrible traffic accident on the Pifo-Papallacta road that leaves 18 injured and 24 people dead, so far," said the mayor of Quito, Mauricio Rodas.
Rivera, who previously reported 23 dead and 20 wounded, said that among the deceased also appear three Ecuadorians traveling in an SUV that collided with the bus before capsizing in the sector of Palugo, about 30 km east of Quito.
The official added that among the fatalities there are three children and noted that the bus apparently covered the route from the Amazonian town of Lago Agrio (190 km east) to Quito in its last stretch.
The lieutenant of the Firefighters of Quito, Verónica Toapanta, informed that the accident was registered during the early morning of Tuesday and that the bus had foreign registration.
The accident, according to Rivera, occurred on a descending slope and the bus hit three houses, one of which was destroyed, with no reports of victims in the affected houses.
The vehicle belongs to a Colombian company that moved 38 people from the Colombian city of Neiva to Ecuador through the Amazon jungle, according to the Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo. 96% of the accidents on the tracks are linked to the human factor, the driver's lack of skill in most cases.