Survivors recall tragic memoirs after sleeper bus accident kills 10 in north-central Vietnam

Tran Huy Tung, a 42-year-old man from Bac Ninh Province, was among the injured victims in the crash.

Even several hours after being admitted to Ky Anh Town General Hospital, he remained in shock.

He remembered that the bus had departed from Nuoc Ngam Coach Station in Hanoi at about 8:00 pm on Thursday en route to Da Nang.

After midnight, it reached Ha Tinh and stopped for approximately ten minutes before continuing the journey.

At around 2:10 am on Friday, the bus suddenly shuddered fiercely before tipping over to the right.

Tung said he had been lying on a second level bunk when the accident occurred. He then hurriedly crawled out through a shattered window and helped others escape.

It was dark inside the bus and people started crying out for help. Many were trapped and unable to get out.

The scene, he recalled, was chaotic, with suitcases and personal belongings scattered while dead and injured passengers were both inside and outside the vehicle.

Another survivor, Pham Quang Rin, 27, of Da Nang City, recounted that he woke to a deafening crash and saw the bus tilting.

Several windows shattered. Some passengers were ejected, while others remained inside and were crushed together amid the wreckage.

Rin said he smashed a window to escape, and local residents used hammers to break glass and rescue those still trapped.

Chaos broke out, with people screaming and calling for help.

Police officers arrived at the scene shortly after, launching rescue operations and transferring injured passengers to Ky Anh Town General Hospital and Ha Tinh Province General Hospital.

Among the ten dead victims, seven died at the scene and three succumbed after hospitalization.

When the overturned bus was finally lifted, Rin recalled that several people trapped beneath its weight became visible.

Traffic police reported that 28 people were on board, including one driver, one assistant driver, and 26 passengers, among them a child under seven.

The driver, 36-year-old Le Ngoc Thanh from Dong Quang Ward, Thanh Hoa Province, stated that a front tire blowout caused a loss of steering control, which caused the bus to veer off the road, strike roadside markers, and overturn.

Preliminary breathalyzer and drug tests showed that Thanh was not under the influence at the time of the crash.

Local police are continuing their investigation into the cause of the devastating accident.