Bus Drops Off Cliff In Albania, Killing At Least 8 People

TIRANA, Nov 9, At least eight Albanians were killed and five were in a critical condition after their Greece-bound bus fell off the road into a 100-meter precipice in southern Albania, China's Xinhua news agency quoted police and witnesses as saying.

Firefighters, policemen and special elite police troops rushed to the scene of the accident and were trying to overturn it with two cranes to help get out the survivors. Witnesses said they heard people crying out for help from the carcass of the bus as the rescuers were approaching and while they were trying to get them out.

"Eight people died after the bus of the Durres-Athens route fell 100 metres off the road. Five people are in a life-threatening condition while 36 are out of danger," police spokesperson Kleida Plangarica said shortly before midnight on Monday.

Speaking from the scene of the accident, firefighter chief Shkelqim Pashaj confirmed eight had died an hour before midnight on Monday when the search and rescue operation ended. Unofficially, more were believed dead.

The driver of the bus, a Greek citizen, whom the passengers described as talking all the time on his mobile phone while driving, had been taken to hospital but was not in a life-threatening condition.

"The injured passengers at the Fier hospital blame the driver for the incident, saying he was drunk," a reporter at the hospital said. "The mother of two twins aged six has died." However, Greek media reported a punctured tire was to blame for the accident.

Of the 1.2 million Albanians working abroad in search of a better life, an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 work and live in neighbouring Greece, a European Union member. Most travel cheaply by road, including the area where the route zigzags uphill and downhill along the mountainous area of southern Albania.

Greece had offered to help treat the wounded at its hospitals across the border from southern Albania.

Fourteen people died after their minivan swerved off the road in the northern mountainous area of Puke in mid-July.