Nine people died and four others were injured when a bus carrying 15 Vietnamese farmers crashed into an unfinished bridge and then fell into an abyss in Laos’ Champasak province yesterday.

All 15 people were farmers and construction workers from central Nghe An province who had been hired by a local contractor, Tran Ba Anh, to work on a number of construction projects in Laos. In the early morning of December 19, after completing a construction project in Attapeu province, they were taken by bus to another site in Pakse, the capital city of Champasak. It was dark at the time and the bus crashed into a bridge that was under construction before falling into an abyss nearby, witnesses said, adding that the bus driver was probably not familiar with the terrain there. “When the bus was falling into the abyss, many iron bars from the bridge also fell down along with the vehicle,” said a relative of one Vietnamese survivor. Contractor Tran Ba Anh and his two relatives also died in the accident. Yesterday night, the victims’ families in Van Dien and Nam Thanh communes in Nghe An received the bad news through phone calls from Laos. The nine dead victims are Tran Ba Anh, Nguyen Tran Trung, Nguyen Tran Dat, Luong Van Hung, Luong Van Thanh, Nguyen Quang Trung, Tran Van Que, Le Dinh Dong and Nguyen Xuan Tue. Of these, the first six were from Van Dien commune and the others from Nam Thanh. Four injured people are being treated at hospitals in Laos, including Le Van Thinh, Tran Ba Nam, Tran Ba Toan and Dang Van Cuc. It is expected that the bodies of the victims will be brought back to Vietnam on December 21, said Tran Ba Minh, chairman of the Van Dien commune People’s Committee. As Nghe An province borders Laos, many Vietnamese people often take business trips to the country. On February 23, a bus turned over on Na Hin Pass in Borikhamxay province, Laos, killing four Vietnamese people who came from Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces, Minh said.