nine die as car plunges over png cliff

A horror story from PNG, suppliers to OSH - Dreadful!!

Nine people including a pregnant woman and two children have been killed on Papua New Guinea's Highlands Highway when a 10-seater four-wheel-drive vehicle plunged off a cliff into a river.
Vegetable seller John Paragua, his pregnant wife and daughter, four of his male employees, a woman and a 12-year-old boy died when the vehicle went off the road at Togoba outside Mt Hagen in Western Province early Monday morning.
Police said all nine, who were from Southern Highlands Province, died instantly when the vehicle plunged 10 metres into the river.
It appeared the vehicle's driver had tried to avoid a landslip on the road.
A tow truck retrieved the vehicle and towed it with the bodies still trapped inside to Mt Hagen where firefighters used gas and hydraulic metal cutters to free them.
Paragua, a former army officer, ran a local company that supplied fresh vegetables to Oil Search Limited and mining companies in the region and employed 63 staff.
Police, hospital and tow truck company staff said the crash was one of the worst they had seen on the Highlands Highway, the main route passing through PNG's uplands.