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At least 47 people, nearly all children heading to school for final exams, drowned yesterday when their bus plunged off a bridge in western India, According to Reuters.

Distraught parents rushed to the scene of the disaster in Gujarat state as rescue workers struggled to find survivors in the water and a huge crane was used to haul the smashed vehicle out of the Narmada canal.

The accident in Bodeli, about 170 kilometres from Ahmedabad, the state’s commercial capital, was Gujarat’s worst road accident, local media reports said. Police said the death toll could rise.

At least 44 children, the driver and the bus conductor, as well as an unidentified woman died in the early morning accident. The bus veered off the road and smashed through a concrete barrier.

The children - aged 13 to 15 - were travelling to school to take final exams, a Gujarat state transport official, G.M. Aloriya, told the NDTV news channel.

Wailing parents of 15 of the dead - all girls from the same village of Bamroli, close to the accident site - carried their children’s bodies to the cremation ground late yesterday for one of several mass funerals for the victims.

Parents emerged from their houses carrying their daughters on wooden biers as the funeral procession wound slowly through Bamroli village. Stores closed their shutters as a mark of respect.

The dead girls were dressed in red and pink saris to signify their unmarried status. Parents shielded the bodies from the hot sun with black umbrellas.

“Forty-four bodies have been fished out of the canal”, which was 18 metres deep, said a police officer, M. S. Bhabhor, who was supervising the emergency rescue operations.

The death toll could increase as some bodies might have been washed away, he said.

It was not immediately known how many passengers were on the bus, but some local media reports said the figure could be more than 60.

“The driver seems to have lost control and the bus broke through a protective railing, plunging into the canal,” the police officer said.

Two boys who swam to safety alerted villagers that the bus had plunged into the canal.

The Gujarat government, which announced compensation of 100,000 rupees ($2700) for the families of the dead, said it would hold a high-level inquiry into the cause of the accident.

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