“The passenger bus fell into a road side ditch, leaving 15 passengers dead on the spot and some 22 to 24 were injured,” Ratan, a Faridpur police official, told Xinhua.

“Nine of the injured died on the way to local hospitals,” he added.

The accident occurred as the bus driver lost control over the steering and plunged the vehicle into a ditch.

Bangladesh has one of the highest fatality rates for road accidents in the world mainly due to shoddy highways, poorly maintained vehicles, violation of traffic rules by inept drivers and lack of monitoring of the traffic department.

According to a study of Accident Research Center of Bangladesh University of Engineering Technology, some 10,000 to 12,000 people are killed in road accidents in Bangladesh every year, of which about 75 percent fatalities occur in rural areas.  Enditem