11 students dead after minibus crashes into Kashmir gorge

Eleven students were killed when theirvehicle skidded off a road into a deep mountain gorge inIndia-administered Kashmir on Thursday, local officials said.At least seven others travelling in the minibus were injured in theaccident in South Kashmir's Shopian district, senior administrationofficial Mohammad Saleem Malik said. The condition of two of them wascritical.The victims, nine of them women, were enrolled in a computer traininginstitute in Surankote town, Malik said. They were aged between 20and 25.India has the highest number of traffic fatalities in the world. Anaverage of 135,000 people die on the country's roads each year,according to government data. Many accidents are reported in mountainous regions like Kashmir andare usually caused by reckless driving, bad roads or the poorcondition of vehicles.