BANGKOK, August 12 (Itar-Tass) - All the Russian tourists injured in a car crash in Thailand's province of Kanchanaburi on Friday have been discharged from hospital, a Russian Embassy official told Itar-Tass.
"Everybody's been discharged. Some wish to fly home as soon as possible. They're now settling this issue with their travel agency," head of the Embassy's consulate department Andrei Dvornikov said on Monday.
A bus carrying Russian tourist was on an excursion from Pattaya on Friday. It had an accident in the province of Kanchanaburi, 120 kilometers from Bangkok. There were 43 tourists and a guide in the bus. "We drove to the river Kwai. A heavy rain started three hours after we passed Bangkok. The bus was running at 90 to 100 kilometers per hour. I don't know what happened, but the bus fell to one side and we knocked down a tree. Then pieces of broken windows showered us. I remember helping people get out of the bus through windows," Alexander Shapoval from Novokuznetsk, who had come to Thailand for holiday with his parents for the first time, told Itar-Tass.
After the accident, medical assistance was provided to 26 Russians. Five tourists from Vladivostok, Novokuznetsk and Krasnoyarsk were hospitalized with fractures, bruises and lacerated wounds.
The bus driver said the accident had been caused by a steering system failure as he was negotiating a turn. But tourists do not rule out the human factor. "Before the accident, the driver was doing something with the phone: writing a message or phoning somebody," said Shapoval who had been hospitalized with arm fracture.