Pallade Veneta - More than 20 feared dead in Thai school bus inferno

A devastating blaze tore through the coach on a highway in a northern Bangkok suburb as it carried 38 children -- ranging from kindergarten age to young teenagers -- and six teachers on a school trip.

The victims' bodies were so badly burned that officials are unable to give a precise death toll yet, while identifying remains could take days.

Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said 21 people escaped from the blaze but 23 are still unaccounted for and likely to be dead.

Rescue workers put up screens around the wreckage to shield firefighters and investigators as they began recovering bodies.

"Some of the bodies we rescued were very, very small. They must have been very young in age," Piyalak Thinkaew, who is leading the search, told reporters at the scene, adding that the fire started at the front of the bus.

"The kids' instinct was to escape to the back so the bodies were there," he said.

The bodies are so badly charred that it is hard to identify them, he said.

Some of the children who survived suffered horrific burns to their faces, mouths and eyes, doctors treating them told local media.

The bus was one of three carrying children from Wat Khao Phraya Sangkharam school in the northern province of Uthai Thani on a field trip to a science museum in northern Bangkok.

A video posted on the school's Facebook page just hours before the tragedy shows the group of youngsters in orange uniform shirts stopping off at the ancient Thai capital of Ayyuthaya.

The disaster began when one of the bus tyres burst on the highway around 12:30 pm (0530 GMT), sending it crashing into a barrier and triggering the inferno, rescuers said.

Video footage from the scene showed flames engulfing the bus as it burned under an overpass, huge clouds of dense black smoke billowing into the sky.

- Poor road safety -

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said the government would pay for the survivors' medical treatment and compensate the victims' families.

"As a mother, I would like to express my deepest condolences to the families of the injured and deceased," she wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Meechai Sa-ard, a motorbike taxi driver, heard the noise of the incident from a kilometre (0.6 miles) away.

"There was smoke everywhere. Poor children, I heard they were very little," he told AFP.

"I was hoping that god would be kind so that the rain could put the fire out and the kids would survive."

Thailand has one of the worst road safety records in the world, with unsafe vehicles and poor driving contributing to the high annual death toll.

Around 20,000 people are killed every year on the kingdom's roads, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) -- more than 50 a day on average.

The economic losses caused by traffic deaths and injuries amounted to around $15.5 billion in 2022 -- more than three percent of GDP -- the WHO says.

R.Zaccone--PV