Six children killed in French school bus-lorry crash

The head-on smash with a lorry carrying rubble came around 7.15am near Rochefort in the western Charente-Maritime region.

French forensic police work near the wreckage of the school bus-lorry crash near Rochefort. Xavier Leoty / AFP Photo
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PARIS // A school minibus crashed into a lorry in France on Thursday, killing at least six children, police said, a day after another road accident involving a school bus left two dead.

The head-on smash with a lorry carrying rubble came around 7.15am (10.15am UAE) near Rochefort in the western Charente-Maritime region.

The school bus was carrying about 17 people, and three other children suffered minor injuries in the accident, a police source said.

On Wednesday two children, ages 12 and 15, died when a school bus veered off a road in snowy conditions near the Swiss border in eastern France.

That school bus was carrying 32 children on its daily trip to the village school in Montbenoit when it “left the road”, a police source in that case said.

* Agence France-Presse