Wedding party truck plunge leaves 33 dead

The truck flipped over at a bend in the road and plunged into a 300ft gorge in Himachal Pradesh state’s Chamba district, nearly 100 miles north-west of the town of Dharmsala.

Rescuers recovered 33 bodies and took seven injured people to hospital, said a police spokesman.

Another seven people were killed in a separate accident nearby when a bus plunged into a gorge as they were being driven home from a nearby power project.

The drivers in both accidents were killed, and police are investigating what caused the crashes.

India, the world’s second most populous nation, has the highest annual road death toll, according to the World Health Organisation.

More than 110,000 people die each year across the country in crashes caused by speeding, bad roads, overcrowding and poor vehicle maintenance, according to police.