PARIS (AP) — A bus carrying children to school crashed Friday morning in eastern France, killing a 7-year-old girl and an 18-year-old boy, Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said.
Sixteen people were injured, three of them seriously, the prefecture in Ain said.
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Tabarot visited the scene in a rural area northeast of Lyon, where he described the crash as a “tragic accident” and expressed condolences to the victims’ families.
“This is a bus operated by the regional authority that was transporting about 15 students” and other passengers, he said.
Ain prefect Louis-Xavier Thirode told news broadcaster BFM that preliminary blood tests carried out on the bus driver found “no traces of alcohol or drugs."
Bus passengers included children traveling to middle and high schools in the area. A photograph from the scene showed that the bus had veered off the road, struck trees and landed in a ditch.
Lent Mayor Yves Cristin told broadcaster Franceinfo that “the road was a little wet, there was no fog, and we don’t understand why the bus ... veered off the road.”
“My thoughts are with the victims, the injured and their families,” French President Emmanuel Macron said on X. "The nation stands with them. My gratitude goes to the emergency crews responding to the accident.”
“It is always a difficult moment when our students, our children, are victims of an accident like this,” Education Minister Édouard Geffray told reporters during a visit to a high school in the Paris region.
