Summary At least 24 people were killed when a double-decker bus crashed in mountainous pass near Cape Town.
CAPE TOWN (AFP) - Twenty-four people including two children were killed in South Africa on Friday when a double-decker bus carrying a church group crashed in a mountainous pass near Cape Town.
Rescue teams had to use a crane to lift the bus and cut away bodywork to extract passengers trapped in the overturned wreckage in the Hex River pass.
"Twenty-three died on the scene and one person on the way to hospital," said Faiza Steyn, Western Cape health spokeswoman.
Of the dead, 22 were female. Another 45 people were injured and taken to hospital.
The bus veered off the road 140 kilometres (87 miles) from Cape Town and landed on its side, said provincial traffic services head Kenny Africa.
"A lot of the passengers were trapped under the bus, we had to use a huge crane to lift the bus to get the passengers out underneath," he told AFP.
The bus "collided with the mountainside so they had to cut some of the body parts of the bus to free the people that were trapped inside," he added.
According to the traffic official, braking problems appeared to have caused the accident.
The driver had tried to stop the bus by entering a sandy, slowing lane. But this failed and he lost control, with the bus landing on its side against the mountain.
The bus was bringing people back home to Cape Town s township of Khayelitsha from a church gathering in eastern Mpumalanga.
The victims had attended a prayer meeting in Secunda and were from various congregations of the 12 Apostles Church in Christ s Pastor Dumisani Ximbi told the public broadcaster SABC.
"They are members of the church. These women were from Mpumalanga in Secunda where there was a national prayer meeting," he said.
The emergency effort involved three helicopters, including an air force chopper, 11 ambulances and nine other response vehicles.
Two of the injured were in a critical condition and one was a child, said Steyn.
The identification of bodies will begin on Monday.
