Two people died and over 10 were injured Friday in Tokushima Prefecture when a truck rammed a stranded minibus filled with high school students, police said.
The impact killed the male bus driver, a female passenger, and injured 10 of the 14 other occupants, most of them girls, the police said.
The truck driver, 50-year-old Takashi Kikuchi of Ehime Prefecture, was arrested.
The accident occurred shortly after 5 p.m. when the truck rear-ended the minibus while it was parked on the side of the Tokushima Expressway in Naruto due to a mechanical problem. The crash knocked the bus off the expressway and down an embankment before it overturned.
According to the local education board, the students aboard the bus were from at least three high schools in Tokushima. They were returning from a school session at a vocational college in Kobe.
