A passenger bus carrying mostly secondary school students plunged about 100 feet into a rocky ravine on the mountainous Campanas de Cima route on Fogo Island, Cape Verde, Africa, on Saturday, September 5, 2026, killing 25 people, including the driver, and injuring 14.
The crash happened at about 9 p.m. local time while the vehicle made its way back from a day trip to Chã das Caldeiras, a settlement inside the volcanic crater that dominates the island. Most of the dead were teenagers. São Filipe Mayor Nuias Silva confirmed the death toll on Saturday.
Early accounts estimated that about 30 people were aboard; a fuller count put the number at 38 passengers plus the driver. Around 19 people were taken to São Francisco de Assis Regional Hospital, four of them in serious condition, according to reporting from the island. Seven bodies were buried immediately because of their condition, local media reported, citing the island’s health authorities.
It is the deadliest transport accident to occur on Cape Verdean soil, surpassing the 1999 crash of TACV Flight 5002.
Not a School-Organized Outing
Although nearly all the passengers were students, a local authority said their schools had not organized the outing. A local authority said the driver himself arranged the trip each year for the students he drove during the school year, customarily at the end of one school year or before the start of the next.
Most of those killed came from Curral Grande and Ponta Verde, two communities on an island whose population is spread across steep terrain.
Rescuers Slowed by Rocky Terrain
Several people were thrown from the bus in the fall and others were trapped inside. The rocky, difficult ground where the vehicle came to rest complicated the rescue and recovery effort.
The São Filipe Municipal Council posted a statement expressing solidarity with the families of the victims, along with their classmates, teachers and the wider educational communities affected. The council said it had a team in the field working alongside the Health Department, the National Police and the Municipal Volunteer Fire Department.
Cape Verde’s president, Jose Maria Neves, called the crash “a great catastrophe” in a statement. “I offer my condolences to the bereaved families, to the friends of the victims, and to the island of Fogo,” he said.
The government declared two days of national mourning.
Cause Remains Under Investigation
Authorities opened an investigation and have not established an official cause. Early accounts differed on what happened in the moments before the bus went over the edge: some reports at home and abroad said the vehicle simply ran off the mountain road, while others pointed to a possible tire failure. That remains an early hypothesis rather than a finding.
Investigators must answer several questions rather than settle on a single presumed cause: why the bus left the roadway, whether it was mechanically sound, and what role the layout of the route and any roadside barriers played in the severity of the crash. A vehicle that goes off a road at a high point can strike rocks and terrain on the way down, multiplying the force of the impact well beyond that of an ordinary collision.
A Small Nation, an Outsized Loss
Cape Verde, an archipelago off the coast of Africa, has a population of fewer than 600,000 people, so a crash of this scale registers nationally as well as locally. Fogo is one of the smaller inhabited islands, and the dead came largely from two neighboring communities.
Interior Minister Paulo Rocha has presented figures showing 5,903 road crashes across the country in 2024, with 39 people killed, 154 seriously injured and 1,404 hurt less severely. The number of crashes rose 6.4 percent from 2023, while the death toll increased by two.
International estimates suggest the official tallies understate the problem. In a 2023 road-safety profile, the number of people killed on Cape Verdean roads in 2021 was put at 97, well above the 39 fatalities officially reported for 2020, with a 2021 death rate of 16.5 per 100,000 residents.
The toll from Campanas de Cima stands at 25 dead and 14 injured, with the investigation into what sent the bus off the road still open.
