FIVE French citizens have died while on a charitable mission in West Africa after their bus crashed off a bridge in Togo, several sources told AFP on Wednesday.
Confirming Tuesday’s road accident in the centre of the coastal nation, the Togolese government gave a toll of five dead and eight wounded, without specifying the victims’ nationalities.
“The bursting of the front tyre of a minibus” led to a “loss of control” of the vehicle, which then “crashed under the Yomaboua River bridge,” the Togolese statement added.
The victims were members of the Lions Club charity en route to open a maternity clinic in neighbouring Benin Republic, according to an official from the group’s branch in La Ciotat in southwestern France, the hometown of three of the deceased.
“We also have some wounded,” the official said, without being able to detail their number or the severity of their condition.
On its website, the Lions Club, an international health and environment charity, says it has 1.4 million members across the world.
