At least 25 people, most of them schoolchildren and teenagers, died in a Cape Verde bus crash after a vehicle veered off a mountain road and plunged around 30 metres into a ravine on Fogo Island late on Saturday.
The Cape Verde bus crash happened at about 9pm local time on the road linking Chã das Caldeiras to Campanas de Cima, in the northern highlands of São Filipe municipality. The bus was returning from a day trip when it went over the edge.
According to Inforpress, Cape Verde’s national news agency, the vehicle left the road and fell into a steep, rocky ravine close to a riverbed. The site is difficult to reach by ordinary vehicle, and that has slowed rescue work through the night and into Sunday.
Twenty people are reported to have died at the scene. Five more died later in hospital. Several bodies were buried within hours, local media say, citing health authorities on the island, because of the condition of the remains.
Survivors were taken to São Francisco de Assis Regional Hospital on Fogo. Officials have warned the toll from this Cape Verde bus crash could still rise as recovery work continues in the ravine.
Most of those killed were primary and secondary school students from the Curral Grande and Ponta Verde areas. Local reports put the number of passengers at around 30.
The outing was not run by any school. A local education ministry delegate in São Filipe said the driver had organised the same trip privately, on an annual basis, for years, taking students who normally travelled with him during term time. The driver was among those who died.
That detail has already raised questions about how informal school-run transport is regulated on the islands, and whether trips arranged outside the school system get any real oversight at all.
President José Maria Pereira Neves called the accident “a great catastrophe” in a statement posted to Facebook, offering condolences to the families of the victims and to the island of Fogo. The government has declared two days of national mourning.
Neves and other officials were expected to travel to Fogo on Sunday to meet families and coordinate the emergency response. The crash is already being described locally as one of the deadliest road accidents in the country’s recent history.
Fogo, a volcanic island of roughly 30,000 people, is known for its steep, winding roads that climb between the coast and the Chã das Caldeiras crater settlement. Accidents on those routes are not new, but rarely on this scale.
Cape Verdean authorities have not yet said what caused the bus to leave the road. No mechanical fault, speed, or driver error has been confirmed publicly, and officials say the inquiry is at an early stage.
Rescue teams are continuing to work through the ravine to recover remains and confirm identities. A fuller account of how many people were on the bus, and who they were, is expected once that work is done.
For now, the Cape Verde bus crash stands as a national tragedy that has touched almost every family on a small island, with two days of mourning under way and the final toll still not settled.
