GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 6 — At least 17 people were killed and 13 injured when a pickup truck plunged off a cliff in eastern Guatemala on Wednesday, a local official said.
Mayor Ramon Diaz of Jocotan, a municipality in eastern Guatemala near the border with Honduras, said the victims were impoverished villagers on their way to town to collect benefits under the UN’s World Food Programme.
Two of the dead were children.
Diaz said it appeared the truck, which witnesses said was transporting about 30 people, had stopped on a slope on a mountain road to pick up more passengers, but started rolling and fell off the cliff.
Press photographs showed bodies strewn around the truck at the bottom of the ravine, covered with blankets as first responders battled to evacuate the injured. — AFP