Wednesday 2, Oct 2023 {HMC} The bodies of 20 children and three teachers have been recovered after a bus transporting school pupils crashed and caught fire outside Bangkok.

The bus was returning to the Thai capital after a school trip to the north of the country.

Videos from the scene showed flames engulfing the bus as it burned under an overpass, with huge clouds of dense black smoke billowing into the sky.

The driver handed himself in to police 100km (61 miles) north of Bangkok, according to local media.

Footage taken shortly after the fatal crash showed the driver attempting to extinguish the fire but he reportedly fled the scene.

Witnesses say the bus crashed into the concrete barrier dividing the highway just north of Bangkok, after a front tyre burst.

The bus was quickly consumed by an intense fire, and many on board were unable to get out. The cause of the fire is still unknown.

Nineteen children and three teachers are reported to have survived, sixteen of whom are being treated in hospital for their injuries.

Transport Minister Suriyahe Juangroongruangkit said the bus was powered by “extremely risky” compressed natural gas.

“This is a very tragic incident,” Mr Suriyahe told reporters at the scene.

“The ministry must find a measure… if possible, for passenger vehicles like this to be banned from using this type of fuel because it’s extremely risky.”

Piyalak Thinkaew, who was leading the search, said it was hard to identify the bodies because they were so badly burnt.

“Some of the bodies we found were very, very small,” he told reporters at the scene, adding that the fire started at the front of the bus.

“The kids’ instinct was to escape to the back so the bodies were there,” he said.

Forensic police said of the 23 bodies found, eleven were male, seven female and a further five were unidentifiable.

The ages of the children on board remains unclear, but the school caters for pupils between three and 15 years old.

Thailand has one of the worst road safety records in the world, with unsafe vehicles and poor driving contributing to roughly 20,000 fatalities a year.

Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister, Anutin Charnvirakul, said an investigation was underway. “We have to investigate the trace of driving from the tire marks, the burning trace, and CCTV footage,” he said.

“In short, based on what we know at this point, this attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective,” Sullivan said during a news briefing at the White House.

“This was first and foremost the result of the professionalism of the [Israeli military]. But in no small part because of the skilled work of the US military and meticulous joint planning in anticipation of the attack.”

Asked what Washington’s view was on possible Israeli retaliation, Sullivan said discussions were continuing between top US and Israeli military and political leaders. “We want to have some deep consultations with the Israelis,” he said.

Sullivan added later: “We are proud of the actions that we’ve taken alongside Israel to protect and defend Israel. We have made clear that there will be consequences — severe consequences — for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case.”

Analysts have been warning for months that the failure of US President Joe Biden’s administration to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to agree to a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip would push the Middle East into a regional war.

“A regional war becomes inevitable when the United States continues to fund and aid Netanyahu and all of his war crimes, his genocide, his attacks on all of his neighbours,” said Raed Jarrar, advocacy director at DAWN, a think tank in Washington, DC.

“This will not stop without the United States putting its foot down and saying, ‘We will not send more weapons to Israel. We will not fund and aid Israeli crimes,’” Jarrar told Al Jazeera.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it fired missiles at Israel on Tuesday evening in retaliation for the killings of people in Gaza and Lebanon, as well as the recent assassinations of Hamas, Hezbollah and IRGC leaders.

The firings came just hours after the Israeli army said it had launched “limited” ground incursions into southern Lebanon. Hezbollah denied that Israeli forces had entered Lebanese territory.

The Israeli military, which has been trading fire with Hezbollah across the Israel-Lebanon border for months, recently escalated its assault on the country. Israeli strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut and other areas have killed and injured thousands of people over the past weeks.

Amid the surge in attacks and regional tensions, the Biden administration has repeatedly said it favours diplomacy and wants to see a de-escalation.

But critics have noted that the US government continues to offer Israel unwavering military and diplomatic support.

Washington provides Israel with at least $3.8bn in military aid annually, and Biden has greenlit $14bn in additional assistance to the US ally since the Gaza war began in October of last year.

In his first comments on the Iranian attack, Biden told reporters that his administration was in “active discussion” with Israel on its response.

“The attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective,” the US president said, adding that “the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel”.

Earlier on Tuesday, the White House said that Biden had “directed the US military to aid Israel’s defense against Iranian attacks and shoot down missiles that are targeting Israel”.

The Pentagon also said in a statement that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant had discussed “the severe consequences for Iran in the event Iran chooses to launch a direct military attack against Israel”.

The statement did not elaborate on what those consequences would be.

A spokesman for the US State Department said on Tuesday afternoon that the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s security remains “ironclad”.

“We will continue to stand with the people of Israel at this critical moment,” Matthew Miller told reporters.

But according to Jarrar, the analyst at DAWN, the Biden administration’s “blank cheque” policy to Israel is what led to the current escalation. “The Biden administration is dysfunctional and there is no one behind the wheel. There is no leadership whatsoever,” he said.

“This administration is completely absent. They give Israel 100 percent of what they want, from weapons and money, and they can exercise 0 percent pressure on Israel.

Netanyahu gets all that he wants, but he doesn’t have to pay a price for anything.

“What we’ve seen today is a result of this failed US leadership in the Middle East and North Africa. The region has officially entered a full-scale regional war.”

Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center Washington DC, also said the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Netanyahu’s government was taking the entire region to “the unknown”.

In the year since the Gaza war began, Jahshan told Al Jazeera that the US has shown “total blind support” for not only Israeli policies, but “for Israeli excesses”, as well.

“This is the result of a one-sided policy that refused to accept any element of rationality from the beginning of this conflict,” he said.

Source: Al Jazeera