Indian bus crash kills 45

A bus plunged into a canal in western India yesterday morning, killing at least 45 people, most of them schoolchildren.

Rescuers were searching for 13 remaining passengers, including the bus driver, after the accident near Vadodara in Gujarat state.



Four children swam ashore and were taken to hospital, the district official Vijay Nehra said.

Water flowing into the canal from a dam was stopped to help rescuers locate the missing people, Nehra said, but 45 bodies had already been pulled from the water.



The victims were mostly students from a village school traveling to the nearby town of Bodeli to sit an exam.

It was not known how the driver lost control of the bus, which smashed through a concrete barricade into the canal. State authorities have ordered an inquiry into the accident, 95 miles (150km) south of Ahmadabad, the Gujarat state capital.