26 high school girls killed in Iran bus accident: report
Iranians wait for a public bus at a bus station in central Tehran on February 19, 2012.
Twenty-six Iranian high school girls died when a bus flipped over southwest of the capital Tehran late Friday, according to local media cited by Reuters.
An additional 18 students were wounded and have been taken to hospitals, said a state television report today, according to Reuters.
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The girls' bus was traveling from the central-western town of Borujen and overturned on the Izeh-Lordegan road, said the Associated Press.
"Traveling at excess speeds on slippery roads was the cause of this accident," highway patrol official Colonel Samad Esfandiari told the semi-official Iranian Students' News Agency, according to Reuters.
An estimated 20,000 people are killed in such accidents in Iran every year, reported AP.
Iran's traffic accident rate is 20 percent higher than the global average, said Reuters, citing figures from the United Nations Children's Fund.