Bus, truck collide, catch fire; over 25 injured

Over 25 people sustained injuries after a state-run KSRTCbus collided with a concrete-mixer truck and caught fire on the national highway near Kottarakkara in the district on Saturday, police said. All the passengers of the bus and the occupants of the truck managed to come out of the vehicles before the fire got spread.

They were admitted to four government and private hospitals nearby, police said. Both the vehicles were completely burnt, disrupting the movement of traffic in the area for some hours, they said.

The timely intervention of the local people and Fire and Rescue Service personnel, who rushed to the spot, helped contain the blaze. The negligence of the truck driver was suspected to be cause for the mishap, police added.