24 students killed in bus crash in Iran

A passenger bus in southwestern Iran overturned on Friday evening, killing 26 female high school students on board, Iranian media reported on Saturday.

Eighteen others were injured when the bus, carrying students from the town of Borujen, flipped on the Izeh-Lordegan road, about 700 km (435 miles) southwest of the capital Tehran, Iranian media reported. "Travelling at excess speeds on slippery roads was the cause of this accident," Colonel Samad Esfandiari, a highway patrol official, told the Iranian Students’ News Agency.

The injured were taken to various hospitals in southwest Iran for treatment, state television said. Road traffic accidents kill nearly 28,000 people and injure or disable 300,000 people a year in Iran, a country of 75 million people, according to statistics from Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund. Road accidents occur at a rate 20 times higher than the world average in Iran, Unicef said. The bus was carrying female students. Iran's state radio reported Saturday.

Senior police official Col. Mohammad Reza Mehmandar, was quoted as saying that the driver lost control of the bus because of high speed in rainy weather. Mehmandar said 19 others were injured in the accident.

They were rushed to hospitals for treatment.The accident took place on the Izeh-Lordegan road, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) southwest of the capital Tehran.