Global General

Special

Newsmaker

Asia Pacific

America

Middle East

Europe

Africa

Road crash kills 15 in Philippine mining town

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-15 15:12

MANILA -- Fifteen people were killed and 14 injured when a delivery truck fell on its side near a mining town in the southern Philippines on Friday, local officials said.

Josephone Franco, a social worker in Compostela province on the southern island of Mindanao, said the truck, carrying empty soda bottles, lost control while negotiating a narrow mountain road in Monkayo, a mining town.

"Five people were killed on the spot," Franco said, adding 10 others died while being treated at a nearby hospital. "They were pinned to death and rescue workers had to remove the six-wheeler truck to get the bodies."

Franco said most of the casualties were women hitching a ride on the delivery truck to sell food, cigarettes and other wares to a nearby gold-rush site.

Road accidents are common in the Philippines due to poor infrastructure, costing the country about $1.9 billion in economic losses in the early 2000s, according to an Asian Development Bank (ADB) study.

The ADB has recorded an average of 1,000 deaths per year in the Philippines due to road crashes.