A bus veered off the road and plunged down a 650-foot slope, resulting in the deaths of at least 25 individuals and injuries to 17 others in a tragic accident.

“The area is challenging to access for emergency responders,” Jhonny Rolando Valderrama, head of the highway protection division, informed the AFP news agency. The cause of the crash is still under investigation.

Valderrama stated that the bus overturned and tumbled down the slope at approximately dawn. He expressed regret that this was just the latest in a series of similar incidents on the Los Libertadores highway in the Andes.

A police official subsequently informed the state news agency Andina that 42 passengers were on board the bus, indicating that all passengers have been accounted for. Ground transport superintendent SUTRAN then issued a statement identifying Turismo Molina Union SAC as the owner of the bus and initiated an investigation into the company.

According to the AFP, Peru recorded over 3,000 fatalities from more than 87,000 crashes, with a significant portion attributed to “human factors.”

In January, another passenger bus fell into a ravine in northern Peru, resulting in the deaths of 25 people and leaving many others injured. The bus involved in that incident belonged to Q’orianka Tours and had departed from the capital Lima, heading towards the Tumbes region near Ecuador.

Peru’s prosecutor’s office attributed the January incident to reckless driving and speeding, stating that these factors are responsible for most bus accidents in the country. Another contributing factor is the often slow and disorganized response time to accident scenes, which can lead to further casualties.

An incident in April resulted in the deaths of 25 individuals after a bus crashed in the northern Cajamarca region. This accident was reported as the deadliest highway accident in Peru in two years.

A crash in September 2023 claimed the lives of around two dozen people after a bus plummeted down a slope after veering off a mountain road in the northwest Ayacucho region. In a more recent accident in May, 13 individuals were killed and 14 others injured when a bus rolled down a cliff in Ayacucho.