Two killed, 55 injured in bus plunge off bridge in Russian Far East

Two people were killed and 55 injured Friday when a bus plunged off a bridge in the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk, emergency response officials said.

Five of the injured were children, said Sergei Vlasov, spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry. Thirty-four of those hospitalized were in grave condition, he said.

Russian television stations broadcast footage of the bus, crushed and lying on its roof after the fall.

Police said that passengers reported that the driver had apparently taken ill before the crash.

"We assume that the driver fell sick. Two witnesses say that he cried out then wheezed, and afterward the bus lost control and began falling," Vyacheslav Kupriyanov, deputy police chief of the Khabarovsk region, told Russian TV channels.