At least 17 die in Russia as bus plunges into sea

At least 17 people died in southern Russia on Friday after a bus carrying construction workers veered off a pier and plunged into the Black Sea. The bus was carrying people from their shift constructing the jetty for the Tamanneftegaz oil company in the port of Taman when it fell into the water from a height of four metres (15 feet).
"As a result of the traffic accident, 17 people died, one is missing and 33 people have been hospitalised," the Investigative Committee that probes serious crimes said in a statement on its website on Friday evening. Local authorities had given an earlier death toll of 18 but the emergency situations ministry published a list of 17 confirmed dead.
A spokesman for OTEKO, a conglomerate which owns Tamanneftegaz, told Interfax that the bus was carrying people who were working on the company's construction site but who were not employed by the company directly. He said the bus did not belong to the company. In a statement, OTEKO's deputy director Irina Trifonova called the accident a "terrible tragedy".