At least 25 people were killed Saturday when a bus carrying students plunged roughly 30 meters, or about 100 feet, down a ravine on a mountain road on Cape Verde’s Fogo Island, local officials and media said.
The death toll rose over the course of reporting following the crash. Early accounts Saturday night put the toll at 18, before officials revised it upward to 20, then 21, and ultimately 25 as rescue and recovery efforts continued. Cape Verdean President Jose Maria Pereira Neves called the crash a great catastrophe in a statement posted to Facebook.
The crash occurred around 9 p.m. local time along a cliffside road with sharp bends between Cha das Caldeiras and Campanas de Cima, in the Sao Filipe municipality, according to the local Sao Filipe Municipal Council. The bus was carrying students on an annual outing when it went off the edge of the road.
What We Know So Far
Accounts differed on the age range and school level of the students aboard. One report described the passengers as primary school pupils between ages 6 and 11, while other accounts identified them as secondary school students from the communities of Curral Grande and Ponta Verde, a significant discrepancy in the victims’ ages that had not been resolved as of the latest reporting.
The bus driver was among those killed, according to local news agency Infopress. Sao Filipe’s education minister, Jose Pedro Goncalves, said the outing was not organized by any school but was instead an annual tradition the driver held with the students he regularly transported during the school year, typically timed to the start of summer holidays or the beginning of a new school term. One local newspaper reported the trip was connected to a religious festival honoring Our Lady of Light, which has since been canceled in observance of the tragedy.
About a dozen injured passengers were taken to Sao Francisco de Assis Regional Hospital, with four listed in serious or critical condition. The hospital’s entire staff, along with an additional private doctor, were mobilized to treat the volume of survivors. Rescue teams faced significant difficulty reaching victims given the ravine’s steep, rocky terrain, complicating recovery efforts throughout the response.
The Sao Filipe Municipal Council said in a statement that no words could ease the pain of those who lost loved ones, adding that the municipality stood ready to provide full support to affected families and that the community was coming together in mourning, solidarity and prayer. Local authorities declared two days of official mourning following the crash.
Why This Matters
The crash ranks among the deadliest road disasters in Cape Verde’s recent history, according to Channel Africa, striking a small island nation where a single mass casualty event of this scale reverberates widely across a tight knit community. The driver’s death alongside many of the children he transported daily adds a particularly painful dimension to the tragedy, given that the trip stemmed from what had been a long standing personal tradition between him and his regular student passengers rather than a formally organized school function.
The crash also comes just days after a separate deadly bus disaster in Egypt, where a coach flipped on the Dahab-Nuweibaa road, killing at least 22 people and injuring 28 others, with 16 people dying on impact. The proximity of the two incidents, both involving buses in popular tourist destinations, is likely to draw attention to road and vehicle safety standards on mountainous or coastal routes frequented by both tourists and local school transport services.
What Happens Next
Police have opened an investigation into the cause of the crash, and officials have cautioned that the death toll could rise further as rescue operations continue in the difficult to access ravine. A final, confirmed toll is expected only once recovery and victim identification efforts are complete.
Given the crash’s scale and the two days of mourning declared by local authorities, further details about the victims and the driver’s history operating the route are likely to emerge as the investigation proceeds. It remains unclear whether the incident will prompt broader scrutiny of informal, non-school-organized transportation arrangements of the kind that led to Saturday’s outing.
Reporting drawn from the Associated Press, Channel Africa, Xinhua, Infopress and The Sun USA
