(México) An accident involving a bus transporting pilgrims to a religious site claimed the lives of 19 people in Mexico. Thirty-two others were injured.
Authorities said the vehicle’s brakes had stopped working. The bus crashed into a building in Joquicingo, southwest of Mexico City.
Six people suffered from injuries so severe that they were airlifted to a hospital in Toluca, the capital of the state of Mexico.
The bus was heading for the shrine of Chalma, a place highly prized by Catholic pilgrims for several centuries, in the state of Michoacán.
The condition of the injured was not specified.
Accidents involving pilgrims traveling in aging vehicles are common in Mexico.
Chalma was already a sacred place before the arrival of the Spaniards in the XVIe century. According to tradition, a cross miraculously appeared in a cave once dedicated to an Aztec god. The place has become a place of pilgrimage since that time.