Bus carrying school pupils plunges 30 metres on Cape Verde's Fogo island

A bus left a mountain road on the north side of Fogo late on Saturday and fell about 30 metres into a rocky ravine. By Sunday afternoon Cabo Verde's health minister, Lucio Fernandes, had confirmed 25 deaths to Xinhua. President Jose Maria Neves first posted a toll of at least 10, then 21. National agency Inforpress and Reuters settled on 25, with several more people in Sao Francisco de Assis Regional Hospital. Two teenage girls were described as critical.

The crash happened on the road between Cha das Caldeiras and Campanas de Cima, in the highlands of Sao Filipe municipality. Most of those on board were primary and secondary students from Curral Grande and Ponta Verde. Education officials said the trip was not a school excursion. It was an annual outing the driver arranged privately for pupils he carried during the term. He died in the wreck.

Joao Jose Canuto, Sao Filipe's municipal councillor for civil protection, said crews were still working at a site that is hard to reach and that the toll could rise after identification.

A government team flies in

Fernandes said a delegation led by Prime Minister Francisco Carvalho would go to Fogo at once, with surgeons, orthopaedic specialists and psychologists from Praia. Neves offered condolences and wished the injured a recovery. The government thanked medical staff, rescue teams and residents who reached the ravine before formal crews.

Fogo is a volcanic island in the Sotavento group, west of Senegal. Cha das Caldeiras sits inside the old crater of Pico do Fogo. Roads there switchback on loose slopes. A 30-metre drop on that gradient leaves little room for a bus that leaves the tarmac. The cause is under investigation. Inforpress did not report weather as the main factor in its first dispatches.

Why the school point matters

Local officials repeated that schools did not organise the ride. That line protects the education ministry from an immediate finding of official negligence. It does not reduce the number of pupils on the bus. In a small island community the dead are classmates and neighbours, not an anonymous passenger list. The private character of the trip also means insurance, vehicle inspection and driver-hours rules may sit in a grey zone that a school-run outing would have documented.

Xinhua's first figure on Sunday morning was 21. The jump to 25 by evening followed body recovery in the ravine, not a second crash. Final names will come after the hospital and the morgue finish their lists. Until then the reliable facts are the height of the drop, the private outing, the dead driver and a death toll that the health minister has already put at 25.