Three people died and more than a dozen others were injured as a long-haul bus veered off a lifeline road and plunged down a spring bank in Vietnam’s Central Highlands region early Saturday morning.

At around 2:15 am a coach barreled down the bank of a spring about 20 meters below the over-3,000-kilometer-long Ho Chi Minh Highway, one of the arterial roads stretching from the north to the south of Vietnam, along the Lo Xo Mountain Pass in Kom Tum Province.

By 7:00 am on the same day emergency service workers had successfully extricated the victims from the overturned vehicle and brought them to a local medical center.

The bus, which was carrying 42 people, including the driver and attendant at the time, was known to be en route from the northern Vietnamese province of Hai Duong to the southern province of Binh Phuoc.

A coach lies overturned along a spring on the Ho Chi Minh Highway section in Kom Tum Province, Vietnam, June 16, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

A victim is placed on a stretcher at a hospital in Kom Tum Province, Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Three of them died, three were severely injured while more than ten suffered less serious injuries and have been in intensive care.

Fifteen of the injured, including three children, were subsequently transferred to the higher-level institution of Kom Tum General Hospital, Vo Van Thien – the infirmary’s deputy director – told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

Many of the patients have been treated for bone fractures and various injuries, like spinal ones, Thien said.

The whole institution was also put on red alert, mobilizing as many doctors and nurses from all the departments as possible and preparing the blood bank, he added.

Police have been monitoring the traffic and investigating the cause of the incident.

Police work at the scene of the accident on June 16, 2018 in Kom Tum Province, Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

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