Bus crash kills at least 20 people in Peru’s Andes

A bus crash in Peru’s Andes mountains has killed at least 20 people, a local police colonel has told Peruvian media.

Jhonny Rolando Valderrama, head of a highway protection division, told RPP radio that the crash occurred on the Los Libertadores highway in the Ayacucho region, located in the south-central Andes.

The bus, which was carrying more than 40 people, was headed for Ayacucho from the capital, Lima, when it veered off a cliff about 200m (656ft) high in the early morning hours, Valderrama said.

Twenty injured people were taken to hospitals, he added, as rescue teams worked to recover bodies from the crash site.

Photos shared by Peruvian news outlets and on social media showed a damaged bus lying on its side in a grassy area.

Deadly bus crashes are common on Peru’s precarious mountain roads.

In September, two dozen people were killed when a bus plummeted down a slope after veering off a mountain road near Huancavelica, northwest of the Ayacucho region.

Last year, the South American country registered more than 3,130 deaths from more than 87,000 crashes.

The cause of the latest incident has not been established.

Seventy percent of crashes in Peru are due to human factors such as driver incompetence or fatigue, according to official data.