India | Van and 3-wheeled vehicle collide; 5 students dead

i4gplV8mdKQQA van collided with a small three-wheeled vehicle packed with 11 teenage students in eastern India yesterday, killing five students and injuring six others, police said.
Villagers who took the injured students, including three in critical condition, to a nearby government hospital in Bihar state became incensed when they discovered no doctors were present. About 100 people attacked the hospital in anger and burned six vehicles, including an ambulance, before stick-wielding police broke up the crowd, Siwan district police Chief Vikas Verman said.
The villagers also held a protest around the bodies of the dead students in front of the hospital, stopping traffic, he said.
Doctors later arrived and began treating the injured at the hospital in Siwan, about 200 kilometers north of the state capital of Patna. The students were then transferred to critical care units in other hospitals, Verman said.
Police originally said the students, aged 15-16, were traveling in the van, but later said they were in the three-wheeled vehicle, called an auto rickshaw. It was not immediately clear if the driver was also injured.
The government ordered an investigation into the accident.
Bihar state said it will give 200,000 rupees, or about USD3,200, to each of the families of those killed. AP

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