A bus carrying 40 elementary school students and six adults crashed in the French Alps Saturday, local media reported.
The bus plunged down a wooded slope into a creek near the town of Corps in southeastern France. Two adults — the driver and his partner — were seriously injured in the crash.
One other adult and 18 children were treated for minor injuries, authorities said. Four children were transported to a nearby hospital for observation.
“They are all doing well,” the town’s mayor, Fabien Mulyk, said.
Pap Ndiaye, France’s minister of national education and youth, wrote on Twitter that the children were returning from a summer camp in Hautes-Alpes.
The bus was on its way to the city of Grenoble, where the children would take a train back to their hometown of Sceaux, near Paris, according to French public broadcaster France Info.
Weather conditions were reportedly clear, with no ice or snow on the road by the time of the crash. The “most probable scenario” was that the driver might have had a medical emergency while driving the bus, the mayor said.
The local prosecutor has opened an investigation, adding that the children were shocked but had no “serious injuries.”
A photo published online shows the bus with shattered windows leaning down the slope of a ravine.
“It could have been much worse than that, given the circumstances,” Mulyk told local media.
All the children were said to be wearing seatbelts, according to the prosecutor.