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Several feared dead in school bus accident
15th December, 2025 07:18 AM
Seventeen people were killed, and 20 were injured after a bus carrying school children fell off a cliff in a rural area in northern Colombia, the local governor has said.
In a post on X on Sunday, December 14, 2025, the governor of Antioquia, Andres Julian, said the bus was travelling from the Caribbean town of Tolu to Medellin after a school trip and was carrying students from the Antioqueño High School.
Also Watch: Nine dead, 30 injured in bus accident on Kitui-Machakos Rd
The students had been celebrating their graduation on the beach, he added on Sunday night.
“It’s very hard news for the entire community during the time of December,” he said.
In a video Rendon posted to social media, one of the survivors said, “I was asleep and all of a sudden I heard screams, and from that moment on I don’t remember anything.”
Rescuers had to transport survivors out of the treacherous ravine on stretchers.
President Gustavo Petro offered condolences to affected families in a post on X.
“I don’t like it when young people die. Even less when they’re going to study or to relax happily,” he wrote.
According to local newspaper El Colombiano and the Daily Mail, the crash took place on Sunday on a road connecting the rural northern area of El Chispero.
Although the cause of the crash is still unknown, authorities have hypothesised that the driver may have experienced a “microsleep,” per El Colombiano.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, a microsleep is when an individual loses and regains awareness after a brief lapse in consciousness of around 30 seconds.
Reports show that the bus had been carrying at least 37 passengers when it rolled 80 meters (about 262 feet) down the cliff, per El Colombiano.
The high school has said that the outing was not an official school activity, and instead had been organised by the 11th-grade students.
Colombia’s Ministry of Health and Social Inclusion later identified the injured people in a series of X posts, writing that they included four adults and 12 minors.
Per El Colombiano, the mayor of the nearby town of Segovia, Edwin Castañeda, said that injured people were taken to two hospitals, including one in Segovia and the San Vicente de Paúl Hospital in Remedios.
