FIFTEEN people were confirmed to have been on a bus that plunged into the Yangtze River in Southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality on Sunday, local authorities said yesterday.

The bus veered onto the wrong side of the road and collided into an oncoming private car before breaking through road fencing and flying off a bridge in Wanzhou District at 10:08 a.m. Sunday.

An initial police investigation found that 15 people, including the bus driver, were on the bus at the time of the accident, rescue headquarters said.

Two bodies have been retrieved from the river so far, but their identities are not yet known. Medical staff have taken DNA samples from the families of the missing people for identity verification, according to rescue headquarters.

Rescue work was still ongoing. Over 1,000 rescuers with 48 rescue boats arrived to carry out salvage operations. The Ministry of Transport dispatched five professional deep divers to Chongqing on Sunday night and their equipment was expected to arrive yesterday evening.

With the help of a sonar system, professional rescue ships located an 11-meter-long and 3-meter-wide object on the river bottom and it was believed that it is the sunken bus.

The complex water situations and deep water in the river have complicated the rescue efforts.

A police officer on duty Sunday said the spot where the bus sank happened to be the deepest area in the river. Based on on-site technical analysis, rescuers estimated that the bus had sunk about 68 meters under water.

Local authorities are further investigating the cause of the accident.

According to a preliminary investigation, the bus crossed over the line marking the center of the bridge and crashed into the car that was driving normally on the other side.  (Xinhua)