A bus carrying Argentine frontier police plunged off a bridge in rural northern Argentina on Monday, killing 41 people on board, a civil defense official on the scene told CNN.
The bus, part of a three-bus convoy, came to rest in the Balboa River near the northern Argentina city of Rosario de la Frontera, roughly 1,160 kilometers (720 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires.
Nine people were sent to the hospital, according to Ernesto Flores, civil defense undersecretary of Salta province. One passenger survived the accident uninjured, he said.
Rescuers were trying to use a large crane to pull the bus from the river so they could retrieve bodies still trapped inside, Flores said.
“There are still 30 bodies to retrieve. It´s complicated because it´s at the bottom of the river,” Flores said.
Authorities believe a tire blew on the bus, sending the vehicle careering off the bridge, Flores said.
The passengers were members of the Argentine National Gendarmerie, a national police force organized along military lines that provides border security and some domestic security functions.
“This has been the largest loss of life in the history of the force,” a border police spokesperson told CNN.