Twelve people were injured when a luxury bus travelling from Colombo to Anuradhapura left the road and overturned near the Mee Oya bridge on the Puttalam–Anuradhapura road on Friday night.
Police said the accident happened within the Puttalam police division at about 10.15 p.m., according to NewsFirst. All three newsrooms covering the crash attribute it to the weather: the Daily Mirror and Hiru cite adverse conditions, while NewsFirst says prevailing rain caused the bus to skid before it went over.
Who was hurt
The Daily Mirror reports the injured as seven women, a girl and four men — a count that reconciles exactly with the stated total of twelve. Hiru News gives the same breakdown.
NewsFirst lists seven women and an eight-year-old girl “along with the bus driver and conductor”, which accounts for ten of the twelve and omits the men as a group; the Daily Mirror and Hiru both place the driver and conductor among the injured rather than in addition to them. The age of the child — eight — appears only in the NewsFirst account.
All twelve sustained injuries described as minor and were admitted to Puttalam Hospital, which Hiru identifies as the base hospital. Puttalam Police are investigating.
The weather context
The crash falls inside a run of wet weather this desk has been tracking through October. The Meteorology Department issued a severe lightning advisory and flood warnings for Colombo on 15 October, following flooding and landslide warnings across seven districts on 12 October, and health authorities linked a rise in dengue cases to the rains on 16 October.
None of the filings on this crash says whether any advisory covered the Puttalam stretch at the time, and no outlet reports the bus operator or whether the vehicle was overloaded.
Not reported
No filing states the bus operator’s name, the number of passengers aboard, or whether mechanical condition is being examined alongside the weather. Police have not said whether any charge is contemplated against the driver, who was himself injured.
