BANGKOK/MOSCOW, November 15 (RIA Novosti) – At least 23 Russian tourists were injured in a bus crash Friday near a beach resort town in Thailand.
The bus, carrying 51 people on their way to an elephant-trekking tour, veered into a rice field near Pattaya and rolled onto its side at about 6:30 a.m. local time (11:30 p.m. Thursday GMT), according to local media reports.
Four or five people were seriously injured, Andrei Dvornikov, a Russian embassy official in Thailand’s capital Bangkok, told RIA Novosti.
He said all the injured tourists have been taken to hospitals in Pattaya and the nearby town of Si Racha.
Thai news portal Phuketwan reported that the accident occurred when the driver crashed into a pole while trying to avoid a collision with another car.
The executive director of the Tour Operators Association of Russia, Maya Lomidze, told RIA Novosti that two children were among the injured.
It is not clear whether all the people on the bus were tourists from Russia.
