Valmikinagar (West Champaran), July 15: Thirty-nine persons, mostly Indians, were killed today when an overloaded bus skidded off a rain-slicked highway and plunged into the swollen Gandak western main canal near Rani Nagar in Nepal, around 5km north-west of Valmikinagar.

Valmikinagar is situated around 300km north-west of Patna and 250km south-west of Kathmandu.

Thirty-nine bodies, including those of 28 men, 10 women and a child, were fished out till reports last came in. Ten injured passengers were taken to Prithvi Chand Hospital in Nawal Parasi district of Nepal. Two of them are critical.

Around 125 passengers were on the bus, en route from Jhulnipur near Rani Nagar to Triveni in Nepal, when the accident occurred around 1.30pm.

According to sources, most of the bus passengers belonged to Uttar Pradesh and Triveni. Of them, a sizeable number were kanwariyas, who fill up buckets with holy water from Triveni river on way to different temples of Lord Shiva in India and Nepal in the holy month of Shravan.

Nepal officials and the station house officer of Valmikinagar, Bhagirathi Prasad, confirmed the accident.

The driver of the bus (registration number LU-1/2356), Vishnu Gurung, managed to escape the accident site but was later picked up by the Nepal Prahari (police). Initial reports suggest that the driver lost control of the bus, resulting in the accident.

Nawal Parasi chief district officer Vir Bahadur Rae and superintendent of police Gyan Vikram Shah rushed to the accident site.

Officials said 37 of the 39 bodies have been identified so far, and only three of them were of Nepalese citizens, others were Indians.

A team from the Indian embassy in Kathmandu, with a doctor and an official from the consulate general of India, Birganj, were despatched to the site of the accident near the India-Nepal border.

The Indian Embassy in Kathmandu also set up a control room to provide information about Indian nationals involved in bus accident.

Speaking about the rescue measures, the two Nepal officials told mediapersons that the Gandak western main canal had been closed to expedite search and rescue operations. The canal flows towards Uttar Pradesh via Surajpura powerhouse in Nepal. Rescue operations were on at the time of filing this report.