44 Dead in Tour Bus Crash in Tibet
[The New York Times] BEIJING, Aug 10: A tour bus careened off a highway in Tibet in a crash that killed 44 people and injured 11, China’s state news media reported on Sunday.
According to Xinhua, the state-run news agency, the bus was carrying about 50 passengers on Saturday afternoon when it crashed into two vehicles on a mountainous highway and then fell 30 feet, landing on its roof, the local authorities said. The accident occurred in Nyemo County, about 60 miles from the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. The police have detained managers of the companies involved with the tour bus that crashed.
The injured people, most of them tourists from China’s east, were taken to hospitals in Lhasa.
China has spent heavily to develop tourism in Tibet, arguing that economic development will help stem local Tibetan opposition to Beijing’s hard-line policies in the region. Last year, 12.9 million Chinese tourists visited the region, a 22 percent increase from a year earlier, according to the state news media.
