Nine killed, more than 25 hurt in Oregon bus crash: state police

Rescue personnel respond to the scene of a charter bus crash on I-84, east of Pendleton, Oregon in this December 30, 2012 handout photo. Five people were killed and at least 20 injured in the incident. Police said the bus may have gone out of control on the highway before crashing through a guardrail and down an embankment.

Credit: Reuters/Oregon State Police/Handout

By Teresa Carson

PORTLAND, Oregon | Sun Dec 30, 2012 10:54pm EST

PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - Nine people were killed and at least 26 others injured on Sunday when a charter bus headed to Canada from Las Vegas skidded off an icy mountain highway and crashed down an embankment in northeastern Oregon.

The Oregon State Police said a preliminary investigation showed the charter bus, carrying about 40 people through the Blue Mountains en route to Vancouver, British Columbia, "lost control on the snow/ice covered westbound lanes of Interstate 84" near Pendleton.

The bus crashed through a guardrail alongside the road and went down an embankment of around 200 feet. Crews trained in rope rescue were needed to bring victims back up to the highway, police said.

State Police spokesman Lt. Gregg Hastings said nine people had been confirmed killed in the crash.

"We are continuing to try and confirm the total number of passengers and number of injured persons transported to area hospital or secondary locations due to severity of injuries." the state police said in a written statement.

The bus driver survived the crash but investigators said he had not yet been interviewed because of the severity of his injuries.

St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton initially received 26 of the injured, spokesman Larry Blanc said. Five of those patients were stabilized and transported to a secondary hospital by air for further treatment.

"About 10:30 this morning we got the call and declared a Code D, which means we bring in extra staff and supplies," he said, adding that D stands for "disaster."

"There are various types of injuries. Some of the injured were able to walk in on their own," Blanc said. "We are taking a lot of CT scans and assessing the injuries

Blanc said that of the 21 patients who remained at St. Anthony, some had been treated and released and were being provided food and shelter by the Red Cross. Some of them were children, he said.

Brycie Jones, spokeswoman for Oregon Health and Science University said that hospital had received four patients from the bus crash.

Jones said she could not disclose their identities or condition and it was not immediately clear if the patients had come from another hospital.

Authorities identified the charter company as Mi Joo Tour & Travel, based in Vancouver, British Columbia and said the bus was headed there as part of a round-trip from Las Vegas, Nevada.

Representatives for Mi Joo could not be reached for comment on Sunday evening.

Police said the names of the dead and wounded would not be released until next of kin were notified, which could take several days because many were believed to be from out of the country.

Pendleton is in northeast Oregon near the border with Washington state, about 200 miles east of Portland.

(Reporting by Teresa Carson; Writing by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Todd Eastham)

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Another polio worker shot in Pakistan, six killed in attacks

By Jibran Ahmad

PESHAWAR | Wed Dec 19, 2012 1:05am EST

PESHAWAR Pakistan Dec 19 (Reuters) - Another polio worker was shot and badly injured in Pakistan on Wednesday, the latest in a string of attacks that left 6 female health workers dead in 24 hours.

The shooting in the northern city of Peshawar so soon after the other killings calls into question whether the U.N.-backed campaign to eradicate polio in Pakistan can continue.

It's unclear who is behind the killings.

The Taliban have repeatedly issued threats against the polio eradication campaign and health workers said they received calls telling them to stop working with the "infidels". But a Taliban spokesman said his group was not involved.

A global vaccination campaign has eradicated the disease from everywhere except Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

Wednesday's victim was part of a team of four or five men administering polio vaccinations when gunmen opened fire on the group, said a doctor at Lady Reading Hospital where the man was being treated. He remains in a critical condition.

On Monday and Tuesday, six female health workers were killed in attacks in the southern port city of Karachi and Peshawar. The youngest was 17-years-old.

The shootings, five of which happened in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, led provincial health authorities to suspend the polio eradication campaign in the province of Sindh.

But authorities in Khyber Paktunkhwa, where the capital is Peshawar, said they would not accept a recommendation to suspend the campaign.

"You know halting the campaign at this stage would create more problems as it's not a one-day phenomenon. If we stopped the campaign it would encourage the forces opposing the polio vaccination," said local official Javed Marwat.

Polio can paralyse or kill within hours of infection. It is transmitted person-to-person, meaning that as long as one child is infected, the disease can be passed to others.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ihsanullah Ihsan, told Reuters his group was not involved. The Taliban have repeatedly said the campaign is a Western conspiracy to sterilize or spy on Muslims.

Their suspicions were only increased after it emerged that the CIA had used a fake vaccination campaign to gather information about Osama bin Laden.

On Wednesday, Pakistan Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said the campaign needed to continue.

"We cannot and would not allow polio to wreak havoc the lives of our children," he said in a statement.

Pakistan had 20,000 polio cases in 1994 but vigorous vaccination efforts had brought the number down to 56 in 2012, the statement said. (Reporting By Katharine Houreld; Editing by Michael Perry)

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