Eleven children were killed and another is still missing after a Bulgarian tourist bus plunged in Serbia's River Lim late on Sunday.

The bus, carrying fifty Bulgarians home from a school trip to the Croatian coastal resort of Dubrovnik, fell from a 40 meter-deep ravine into the swollen river near Serbia's borders with Montenegro and Bosnia after the driver lost control over the vehicle on the slippery mountainous road.

The cause of the bus accident was found to be a flat front tyre.

The passengers included forty-one students from the Nikolay Katranov school in the town of Svishtov, their teachers, two drivers and a tour guide. The Interior Ministry published the names of the children, for whom there is no information available yet.

Seven girls and three boys are among the kids whose bodies have been pulled out of the river waters after the deadly crash. The dead children are aged between 13 and 17.

The bodies of the victims have not been identified yet.

Recovering the bodies has been difficult due to inaccessible terrain.

Bulgarian Consul Georgi Vadev specified that the crash occurred at a turn of the road. The consul, who made a lightning visit to Prijepole, assuaged fears in Bulgaria, saying that the injured people are in good condition. The hospital of Prijepole has accepted 22 lightly injured passengers, 17 other are accommodated in a hotel in Bijelo Polje.

A tragedy on such a scale has not occurred over the last thirty years, an investigator in Prijepole commented.

MORE about the school bus tragedy READ in the Politics Section

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