At least 13 dead as student bus crashes in Spain

At least 13 people died after a bus carrying a group of university students, many of them foreign, crashed in Spain early on Sunday.

The bus was travelling between the Spanish cities of Valencia and Barcelona.

It was carrying 56 passengers, officials in the northeastern region of Catalonia said.

A local government official put the death toll at 14; Spain’s interior minister, Jorge Fernandez Diaz, told Spanish broadcaster TVE that 13 had died.

Many of the students onboard were participating in an exchange programme between European universities known as Erasmus.

The bus crashed and overturned at around 0600 local time (0500 GMT) on a highway than runs along Spain’s eastern coast.

The bus had been travelling from Valencia, on the last weekend of a major festival known as the Fallas which is known for its exuberant firework displays and attracts many tourists.

The nationalities of the deceased were not confirmed. The driver survived the collision and had been taken to a local police station, officials said.

A heavily damaged car could be seen near the overturned bus at the crash scene, although the cause of the accident was not immediately clear. Most of the remaining passengers had not sustained life-threatening injuries, officials said.