Truck overturns in India: 9 killed

A speeding truck skidded off a highway in western India early Thursday, killing nine people and injuring six others, police said. The truck, filled with bags of cement, overturned while making a sharp curve near the city of Vadodara in the western state of Gujarat, police commissioner Deepak Swarup said.

There were 17 people on the truck when the accident took place, most of them construction workers, said Swarup. He said nine people were killed, crushed under the cement bags, and eight others were rescued by police and firefighters and remain in critical condition. The dead included two women, the commissioner added.

Vadodara is about 112 kilometers (70 miles) north of Ahmadabad, the capital of Gujarat. On Wednesday 30 people died when a bus collided head-on with a truck on the same highway in the nearby town of Baruch.

Hundreds of people are killed every year in road accidents in India from reckless driving, bad roads and aging vehicles, reports the AP. I.L.