LUCKNOW, India: A bus collided head-on with a van that was carrying mourners returning from a funeral in northern India, killing 35 people, police and a news report said Sunday. State police official D.Y.S. Chauhan said another 14 people in the two vehicles were injured in the accident Saturday near Badaun, a town in Uttar Pradesh state. The bus driver was among those killed, he said. The Press Trust of India, citing unnamed official sources, said one of five seriously injured people died in hospital. Chauhan said that the van's driver lost control of the vehicle as it went through a mound of sand. It then crashed into the bus. Badaun is 175 miles (280 km) southwest of Lucknow, the state capital. India, with the world's second-largest population, has the highest annual road death toll in the world, according to the World Health Organization. More than 110,000 people die each year in India in road accidents caused by speeding, bad roads, overcrowding and poor vehicle maintenance, according to police.
