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Nine people killed after bus crash into South Korea | News in South Korea

Fire officials said eight people were seriously injured in what happened in Gwangju.

At least nine people have been killed and eight others seriously injured in South Korea when a high-rise building – which was being demolished – collapsed on a bus, fire officials said.

The accident happened on Wednesday afternoon when the bus was stopped on the road near the crash site in Gwangju, 270 kilometers (168 miles) southwest of Seoul, officials at the Gwangju Fire and Safety Headquarters.

The video footage showed a bus, carrying 17 people, covered with debris and blown up by a thick cloud of dust as the building began.

Yang Ik-je, who owns a shop across the street from the construction site, said he ran outside, driven by a loud noise that made him feel like “the earth is shaking.”

“I could not clearly see the road, as if it was covered with mold,” he told the Yonhap news agency. “I looked at CCTV to see if the house had just collapsed.”

The cause of the crash is not immediately clear, and a police investigation is under way, officials said.

The bus was stopped on the sidewalk near the house when it suddenly crashed. Nine of the passengers were pronounced dead at the scene while the remaining eight were critically injured [Yonhap via AFP]

All workers at the demolition site had been evacuated before the crash.

South Korea has made significant efforts to improve security infrastructure in the aftermath of a number of disasters.

The collapse of a store killed more than 500 people in 1995, a disaster that has severely damaged the country’s peace process. The collapse of a bridge last year killed 49 people.




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