They came home for Christmas. Instead they died in an accident involving the bus they were traveling on, crashed into a 30-meter embankment. The tragedy occurred in South Africa: twenty people, including six children, died and about 55 were injured today in the flight that their bus made in the void, after leaving the road. The bus had departed from Cape Town and at a bend on the Kei Cutting pass the driver lost control of the vehicle. The bus crashed for 30 meters. “Twenty people died at the accident site and we believe that another 55 were taken to nearby hospitals,” said police captain Shannon Kirkhoff. The images from the scene of the incident, transmitted by local TV stations, showed terrible scenes: the police intervened for the first aid that recovered the remains of the children killed in the bottom of the escarpment. The body of one of them, a three-year-old child, was found with his Christmas present wrapped around him. Many injured were transported by helicopter. Operations that lasted about three and a half hours. According to transport minister Dullah Omar, the road conditions were not the cause of the accident. “Many of the victims were seated at the front of the bus,” said agent Kirkhoff, adding that the travelers were returning to their countries, near Butterworth, in the eastern Cape, on the occasion of the holidays. A spokesman for St Dominic Hospital in East London, where most of the injured were hospitalized, said nine patients are in serious condition. Since the beginning of the summer holidays, on December 1st, more than 564 people have died in road accidents in South Africa.