PUEBLA (Mexico): As many as sixty people were feared dead on Thursday after a landslide swallowed a bus in Puebla state in central Mexico.
Emergency workers expressed little hope of recovering any survivors, as the army worked alongside them overnight at the sight of the accident to dig up the bus.
The first body, of a 40-year-old woman, was recovered by rescuers on Wednesday more than 12 hours after the accident, announced Mario Marin, the governor of Puebla.
But Marin refused to speculate on whether the rest of the passengers had perished in the accident.
The bus was completely engulfed in mud, earth and rocks in a sudden landslide around 7:00 am on Wednesday morning near the mountain village of Zacacoapan, in the Sierra Negra area of Puebla.
"We know that there were more than 40 passengers on board, according to witnesses who said the bus was full," said a local official. Others said the number could have been as many as 60 passengers.
Rescuers worked for hours after the mishap hauling mud and rocks away from the accident scene before reaching the bus.
"We went all around the scene, we found that the bus is totally buried, and has a huge amount of earth on top of it. So we sent in machinery to try to clean it out," said Asuncion Cid, a town official from near the accident scene.
Hundreds of townspeople were distraught at the travellers' fate.
