Fourteen people have been killed after a bus taking a group of holidaymakers to a ski resort veered off the road in central Japan.
Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference in Tokyo that 14 people were killed and 27 others were injured in the single vehicle crash in the early hours of Friday.
Suga, the government’s lead spokesman, said the transport ministry had launched an investigation into the accident and sent inspectors to the site. The nine men and five women who died included the bus’s two drivers.
According to fire and disaster management officials, the bus, carrying 41 people, veered into the opposite lane near the resort town of town of Karuizawa in Nagano prefecture, at about 2 am Friday.
The vehicle careered through a guardrail and slid about three metres down the mountainside.
TV networks showed the bus, whose middle section appeared to be bent, resting on its side against some trees.
The nature of the injuries suffered the survivors was not immediately clear but reports said 13 were seriously hurt.
Friday’s accident came just two days after transport authorities forced the owner of the bus, ESP, to suspend operation of one of its seven vehicles for 20 days after failing to require its drivers to take health checkups.
The accident is the latest in a series of tour bus crashes in Japan that have been attributed to overworked drivers on long-distance routes. In some previous crashes, drivers had fallen asleep at the wheel.
Steps were taken to improve driver safety after a fatal crash in 2012 that killed seven people on their way to Tokyo Disneyland, but there were several similar accidents last year, including one in which two people died and more than two dozen were injured.
The Asahi TV network quoted an unnamed survivor of Friday’s crash as saying that almost all of the 39 passengers had been asleep when the accident occurred.
Another survivor, identified only as a male university student, told public broadcaster NHK that the bus swayed before coming off the road. He said he found himself trapped in a corner of the vehicle when it came to a halt.
“I desperately tried to get out and struggled, and the next thing I remember is that I was outside,” he said.
There was no snow or ice on the road surface in the area, located about 180 kilometers (110 miles) northwest of Tokyo, and no visible skid marks.
Most of the passengers were ski enthusiasts aged in their late teens and early 20s, according to the Tokyo-based ski tour operator Keyth Tour.
The company’s package tours are popular among university students and other budget skiers and snowboarders.
