ULUWATU – A minibus carrying Chinese tourists has plunged into a ravine on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali, leaving six people dead and three fighting for their lives, an official said Tuesday.
Four Chinese tourists, the Indonesian driver and a tour guide died when the accident happened Monday as the bus tried to pass along a road towards a popular, cliff-top Hindu temple.
As the bus approached Uluwatu temple in southern Bali, it swerved and fell some 15 metres (50 feet) into the ravine, Djoko Heru Utomo, police chief in the Balinese capital Denpasar, told AFP.
“When the bus was approaching the destination there seemed to be a sudden engine failure,” he said.
The Chinese consulate-general in the city of Surabaya, East Java province, said that three Chinese nationals died on Monday and a fourth died in hospital early Tuesday.
It added that three other Chinese nationals were in intensive care and six had been admitted to hospital but were not in a life-threatening condition.
The bus had been carrying 13 Chinese tourists as well as the driver and guide at the time of the accident, police said.
Bali, a pocket of Hinduism in Muslim-majority Indonesia, is attracting tourists in record numbers, including many wealthy Chinese.
However, accidents are increasingly common on traffic-clogged roads in the popular tourist areas of the south.