Thirty-five people were killed when a packed passenger bus plunged into a deep ravine in the northern Philippines on Wednesday, authorities said.
The bus, carrying 47 Filipinos, had just left the mountain resort city of Baguio when its brakes failed, local fire chief Senior Superintendent Richard Villanueva said.
National police spokesman Senior Superintendent Agrimero Cruz told reporters that 35 people were confirmed dead.
"Six other passengers were rescued seriously injured and unconscious, while the rest (were) rescued
with injuries," he said.
The bus conductor, John Patrick Flores, said he survived by jumping out of the door before the vehicle plunged into the ravine.
"The driver tried to ram the bus into a mango tree to prevent it from falling, but failed," he said.
Police Senior Inspector Leo Guay, who led the search and retrieval operations, said the destroyed vehicle rested on its side on shrub-covered ground.
He said the steep slope made it difficult for rescuers to retrieve the mangled bodies from inside the wreckage.
"There were a few survivors, including the driver and the conductor. It happened very quick, the driver just lost control," Guay said.
Guay said police were in the process of informing relatives of the victims, but said no one from the company that owned the bus had so far come forward to help.
Baguio is about 200km north of Manila.
Road accidents, often involving old buses and careless drivers, are common in the Philippines.
Fifteen people were killed last month when a bus slammed into a concrete wall in Cebu, the Philippines' second biggest city.
Twenty-one people, among them Iranian medical students, were killed a month earlier, also in Cebu, when a bus fell off a cliff.
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