Italian authorities were on Wednesday investigating the cause of a horrific bus crash near Venice that killed at least 21 people including two children. <\/p>\n
RAI reported that the 40-year-old bus driver, identified as Alberto Rizzotto, was among the dead, while 18 people were also injured. <\/p>\n
Italy\u2019s fire services said they would consider whether the bus\u2019s battery may have caused the fire to spread more rapidly after it overheated. <\/p>\n
According to the company website of the bus operator, the bus was electric-powered. <\/p>\n
According to Lungo, concerns about the battery slowed down the rescue operation on Tuesday. Meanwhile the Venice public prosecutor has opened an investigation into the crash. <\/p>\n
Video recently delivered to investigators is being examined to determine if any other vehicles were involved in the incident or if the driver suffered a health issue, the spokesperson said. <\/p>\n
The bus was traveling from Venice to nearby Marghera and was \u201cfull of people returning home from work,\u201d Venice mayor Luigi Brugnaro told state media RAI. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt completely went off the road, it flew off the bridge. It was a bus; it was a highway. We are in mourning,\u201d he added. Brugnaro described the scene as \u201capocalyptic\u201d in a post on Facebook. <\/p>\n
The accident occurred on the overpass of a road that leads from Mestre to Marghera and the A4 motorway, Italian media skytg24 reported. <\/p>\n
For reasons that have yet to be determined, the bus broke through a wall of the overpass, falling between a warehouse and the tracks of the Mestre station below, according to skytg24. <\/p>\n
Massimo Fiorese, the head of the company that operates the bus, said he had seen footage of the moments prior to the crash. <\/p>\n
The video showed the single-decker bus slowing down and appearing \u201calmost stationary\u201d before crashing through the guardrail and toppling over, he told Italy\u2019s Corriere della Sera newspaper, according to Reuters. <\/p>\n
On Wednesday morning, the Italian Senate, which is the upper house of the parliament, held a minute of silence for the victims of the crash, its feed on X said. <\/p>\n
The country\u2019s president and prime minister expressed their condolences in the aftermath of the accident as did other world leaders. <\/p>\n
\u201cI express my personal and the Government\u2019s deepest condolences for the serious accident that occurred in Mestre. Our thoughts go out to the victims and their family and friends,\u201d Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wrote on X. <\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron said \u201cthoughts this evening are with the Italian people, with the families and loved ones of the victims of the terrible tragedy in Venice\u201d in a post on X. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am deeply saddened by the terrible accident of a bus in Mestre this evening. I offer my deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims at this sad time. I\u2019m close to you,\u201d President of the European Council, Charles Michel, wrote on X. <\/p>\n\n
Italian authorities were on Wednesday investigating the cause of a horrific bus crash near Venice that killed at least 21 people including two children. RAI reported that the 40-year-old bus driver, identified as Alberto Rizzotto, was among the dead, while 18 people were also injured. Italy\u2019s fire services said they would consider whether the bus\u2019s <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}